Investigation of the Tube Expansion Test with Elastomer Using Locally Overaged AA6063 Tubes

Abstract

The definitive implementation of Aluminium alloys as the main choice for lighter structural components needs the availability of innovative manufacturing processes capable of overcoming their poor formability at room temperature. The local modifications of the material properties (by means of short-term heat treatments) have shown their effectiveness in such terms. In a previous study from the same authors, it was experimentally investigated that, if a AA6063-T6 tubular component is locally brought to the overaged condition, its strain behavior significantly changes during an expansion test with elastomer. In light of this, the equipment used for the tube expansion tests was simulated by means of a FE model created using Abaqus and properly tuned using data coming from experimental tests carried out on AA6063-T6 tubular specimens. The calibrated model could be thus used to simulate the tube expansion while considering several distributions of the material properties (obtained through different heating strategies). Numerical results confirmed the possibility to change the slope of the strain path, thus suggesting that the strain behavior of a tubular component can be tailored, according to the specific applications, by properly designing the laser heating strategy.