A modified Johnson–Cook model for NC warm bending of large diameter thin-walled Ti–6Al–4V tube in wide ranges of strain rates and temperatures

Numerical control (NC) warm bending is a proven strategy to form the large diameter thin-walled (LDTW) Ti–6Al–4V tubes, which are typical light-weight and high-performance structural components urgently required in many industries. In virtue of unveiling the thermo-mechanical coupled deformation behaviors, uniaxial tensile tests were conducted on Ti–6Al–4V tube within wide ranges of temperatures (25–600 °C) and strain rates (0.00067–0.1 s⁻¹). Moreover, a modified Johnson–Cook (JC) model is proposed with a consideration of nonlinear strain rate hardening and the interaction between strain hardening and thermal softening. Resultantly, the present model gives more accurate predictions for flow stress over the entire deformation ranges and the maximum error decreases by about 90%. By employing proposed model to NC warm bending, preferable precision is obtained in predicting forming defects including fracture, wrinkling and over thinning. The present work lays foundation for the forming limit prediction and process optimization in NC warm bending of LDTW Ti–6Al–4V tubes.