Development of sheet hydroforming for making an automobile fuel tank

Abstract

This article aims at the development of sheet hydroforming for making an aluminum automobile fuel tank which is originally made by steel. Finite element model, including punch, blank, blank holder, binder and die cavity, is established in the first place. A commercial code LS-DYNA is used to simulate the forming process. Simulations are performed to investigate the design parameters, such as pressure, holding force, punch feeding and geometry of blank trimming, which are used for the experiment of prototyping. The prototypes of aluminum fuel tank are then fabricated and used to validate the simulation results. The experimental results show that simulations successfully predict the geometry, size, thickness distributions and location of maximum thinning ratio of aluminum fuel tank using sheet hydroforming.