Abstract
With the increasing need for environment-friendly manufacturing in the automotive industry, hydroforming has been a key technology for producing lightweight components. This Special Issue includes 1 review article and 11 research articles derived from the Sixth International Conference on Tube Hydroforming (TUBEHYDRO 2013) held at Jeju, Republic of Korea, on 25–28 August 2013 that provided opportunities for researchers and engineers from industries, academia, and research institutes to exchange innovative ideas and state-of-the-art technologies on tube or sheet hydroforming.
The first article in this Special Issue is a review article on hydroforming written by Lee, Korkolis, and Kim. This article presents an overview of the hydroforming technologies and recent developments in tube and sheet hydroforming. This article also focuses on the constitutive laws and computational methods applied to hydroforming.
The next seven articles deal with recent advances in tube hydroforming. Tube hydroforming processes involve various factors that affect the success and failure of the forming process. Five articles report process modifications and optimization strategies for improving formability in tube hydroforming. In the article written by Hwang, Wang, and Kang, an adaptive control algorithm is proposed for the T-shape warm hydroforming of the magnesium alloy AZ61 tubes. The article authored by Xu, Zhang, Cheng, and Song presents the application of pulsating hydroforming for improving formability of austenitic stainless steel tubes. In the next article, Shin, Lim, Choi, and Yoon propose a new plunger shape for controlling axial feeding during hydroforming of triangular tubes. In the article written by Intarakumthornchai, Aue-U-Lan, Kesvarakul, and Jirathearanat, a genetic algorithm is used to find the optimum loading path for fuel filler tube hydroforming. Hydroforming can reduce the number of processes for manufacturing complex parts. In the article written by Lee, Lim, Yoon, Song, Kwon, and Moon, hydroforming is used to produce a one-piece Ti tube that replaces a multipart component and eventually lowers manufacturing costs. Tubes are subject to complex loading paths during tube hydroforming, and the conventional forming limit diagram analysis may not be applicable. In the article authored by Nguyen, Lee, Lee, Kim, and Kim, the polar effective plastic strain diagram is utilized for predicting bursting failures during tube hydroforming.
One article is devoted to sheet hydroforming. The article written by Hu, Wang, Fan, Chen, and Wang presents sheet hydroforming for producing an aluminum automobile fuel tank that replaces a stamped steel part.
The last three articles are on emerging forming technologies. The article written by Zhang, Furushima, Manabe, Tada, and Sasaki describes a novel process using a local heating technique for forming metal bellows. Kim, Park, Lee, Kim, Lee, and Lee report experimental studies on electromagnetic forming of advanced high strength steels. In the article written by Zhang, Zhang, Lei, and Dai, high-pressure liquid jet incremental forming is introduced that uses liquid to deform metal sheets.
We, the Guest Editors, hope the articles in this Special Issue contribute to the growth of hydroforming technologies in both academia and industries.
We would like to acknowledge the authors who submitted the expanded version of their presentations at TUBEHYDRO 2013 and referees who reviewed the articles and provided critical comments. We would also like to thank Prof. Paul Maropoulos, the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Engineering Manufacture, Ruth Cranks, Katrina Newitt, and Martin McDonald at SAGE Publications Ltd for the support.