3D FEM simulation of NC precision bending process of thin-walled tube

The NC precision bending process of thin-walled tube is one of advanced plastic forming processes with high efficiency, forming precision, strength/weight ratio and low cost, thus it is playing more and more important role in manufacturing parts in aerospace and automobile industries. However, the determination of parameters crucial to make sure tube parts qualified in the forming process is heavily experience-based and involves repeated trial-and-errors in practice, which makes the production efficiency reduce drastically and does not fulfill the development of high technology. As a result, it is of great importance to analyze the forming mechanism and find out the influence law of forming parameters on the stress and strain distribution in the NC precision bending process of thin-walled tube quantitatively by 3D FEM simulation. The rigid-plastic FEM principle to be used for the process simulation is discussed and the methods of how to solve key problems related with 3D FEM simulation are also put forward in the paper. At the same time, the 3D rigid-plastic FEM simulation system for the NC precision bending process of thin-walled tube is developed on the basis of reasonable FEM model, and then the structure of the FEM simulation system and simulation result are also presented.