Numerical simulation of a stretch-bending process for extruded aluminum rectangular tubes

Numerical simulation of a stretch-bending process for extruded aluminum rectangular tube is carried out using dynamic-explicit finite element code Pam-Stamp2000. It is shown that the maximum die force and cross section distortion increase with increasing pre-stretching, while spring-back shows a decrease trend. Under the same pre-stretching level, local distortion of cross section decreases when the tube wall thickness increases. Numerical simulation result agrees well with that of experiments presented in literature. Furthermore, an analytical approach is performed to describe the die force and axial tensile force at tube end with respect to the die displacement. Also the agreement between the analytical model and the numerical simulation is highly satisfactory.