Evaluation of Circumferential Mechanical Properties of Tubular Material by Flaring Test

Abstract

The investigation into the circumferential mechanical properties of tubular materials has been receiving increasing attention, since the tube hydroforming process has been used in the tubular materials forming field, because the circumferential mechanical properties have a significant effect on the hydroformability of the tubular materials. In the present study, a method for evaluation of the circumferential mechanical properties of the tubular materials with the flaring test was proposed. The expressions for the yield stress, strain hardening coefficient and exponent values of the tube were successfully derived based on the geometrical and mechanical relationships in the tube flaring test. To verify the reliability of this method, the calculated results of the yield stress, strain hardening coefficient and exponent values, obtained from the newly proposed method, were compared to the ones obtained with the conventional tensile tests. It was found that the method proposed in the current study is reliable, with high accuracy. The method is appropriate to evaluate the circumferential mechanical properties of the tubular materials.