A new method for determination of formability limit in the tube drawing process

A new method for determination of formability limit in the tube drawing process was developed using the position controlled mandrel technique. In this method the mandrel has conical angle in a way that with change of mandrel position, the distance between die and mandrel will be changed and various combinations of thicknesses can be obtained using just one conic mandrel. The advantage of this method is determining the limit cross-sectional reduction for each tube dimension with just one experiment. The realized drawing limit tests on the aluminium tubes show that the average maximum area reduction of AA6063 tubes is about 40%. An optimal tube drawing schedule for production of the constant wall thickness aluminium tubes with high cross-sectional reduction in one pass was successfully established based on the proposed formability limit test.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye