Abstract
Abstract
Sheet hydroforming has proven to be an effective method for manufacturing complicated parts. To explore sheet deformation under complex strain conditions, the forming process of a conical cup was studied on the basis of the proposed hydromechanical deep drawing with uniform pressure on to the blank. The failure types including fracture and wrinkling were analysed in detail. The process windows for the pressure in the die cavity were drawn out using the different roughness of the punch surface in local areas. The forming process of the conical cup was explored using pure aluminium and soft steel. Effects of the key process parameters including the punch surface roughness and the pressure variation on the finally formed parts were investigated in both experiment and simulation. It was shown that the results from the simulation were in reasonable agreement with those from the experiment.