Aluminum alloy tubes are widely used in various industries because of their excellent performance. Up to now, when the tube is bent, the elastoplastic deformation evolution mechanism of the cross-section has not been clear, and no direct analytical proof has been found. In this paper, based on the bilinear material model assumption, a new mechanical model of tube plane bending deformation is constructed. The analytical model can describe in detail the evolution mechanism of elastic–plastic deformation on the cross-section of the tube after bending deformation, the position of the elastic–plastic boundary, the position of the radius of the strain neutral layer, and the relationship between the bending moment over the section and the bending radius. According to this model, the deformation law of the tube cross-section during bending is elucidated. The results are as follows: (1) the deformation evolution of the cross-section of the bending deformed tube calculated by the analytical model is in good agreement with the finite element model (FEM) of pure bending. (2) By comparing the results of the analytical model with FEM results, and the processing test of the self-designed four-axis free bending forming tube bender, the bending moments are in good agreement. (3) Compared with the bending moments calculated by several other analytical models of tube bending, this model has a relatively small deviation value.

An investigation of flow behavior and the deformation mechanism for Ti-6Al-4V alloy during the superplastic deformation process is presented in this paper. Constant strain rate tensile tests were performed at 890–950 °C and strain rates of 10⁻², 10⁻³, and 10⁻⁴/s. Then, surface observation by Optical Microscope (OM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Electron Back-scattered Diffraction (EBSD) was applied to obtain the microstructure mechanism. With pole figure maps (PF) for α-phase, obvious texture gradually changed in the main deformation direction. For the titanium alloy, the evolution of texture in deformed samples was attributed to grain rotation (GR). Significant grain rearrangement occurred between grains after deformation. A complete grain rotation accommodated grain boundary sliding (GBS) deformation mechanism is proposed, which can explain texture evolution without grain deformation.

A physically-based constitutive model with internal state variables (ISVs) is established, it is used to describe the flow stress and microstructure evolution of Ti-6Al-4V alloy in the superplastic forming (SPF). The ISVs in the constitutive model includes the dislocation density, grain size, the volume fraction of dynamic recrystallization. The flow stress consists of σ_fd, σ_ta and σ_GB, which are related to forest dislocation, thermal activation and grain boundary sliding (GBS), respectively. The material constants of the constitutive model are determined by the genetic algorithm (GA) optimization. A modeling method path to optimize the flow stress model is established, which is on the basis of the errors between the predicted and experimental flow stresses. In the modified flow stress constitutive model, the grain rotation (GR) is applied as a hardening mechanism, and the void is treated as a softening mechanism. A new GR model is proposed to describe the flow stress which is related to the GR. The modified constitutive model can accurately predict the evolution of yield stress, grain size and flow stress in SPF. With the calculation results of multi-scales constitutive model, the mechanism of Ti-6Al-4V in SPF is discussed, and a new deformation map with dominant mechanisms for Ti-6Al-4V is obtained.

In this paper, a methodology is presented for obtaining the plastic anisotropy of bulk metallic materials using cross-sectional indentation. This method relies on spherical indentation on the free edge of a specimen, and examining the out-of-plane residual deformation contour persisting on the cross-section after unloading. Results obtained from numerical simulation revealed that some important aspects of the out-of-plane residual deformation field are only sensitive to the extent of the material plastic anisotropy, and insensitive to strain hardening, yield strain, elastic anisotropy, and the selected displacement threshold value. An explicit equation is presented to correlate the plastic anisotropy with the characteristic parameter of the bottom shape of residual deformation contour, and it is used to uniquely determine the material plastic anisotropy in cross-sectional indentation. Effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by application on magnesium alloy AZ31B, and the plastic anisotropy parameter obtained from indentation and uniaxial tests show good agreement.

The springback phenomenon of tube bending occurs consequentially after unloading, which will affect the manufacturing accuracy and processing efficiency of the tubular products. In this article, the bending and springback processes of minor-diameter thick-walled tube are simulated by ABAQUS to reveal the springback laws. The springback prediction of three-dimensional variable curvature bent tube is projected on each discrete osculating and rectifying plane, and then the three-dimensional problem can be transformed into two dimensions. The mathematic relationship of the radius before and after springback in the plane is built by approximate pure bending springback experiments. The springback on such planes is transformed into three dimensions. The tube axes are merged by first-order geometric (G1) continuity and then compensated with the modified function according to the axis complexity, so as to establish mathematic analytic model for springback prediction of three-dimensional variable curvature tube bending. Finally, the feasibility, reliability, and accuracy of the model are verified by finite element method and experiments.