Strain Hardening Behavior in the Tube Hydroforming

Strain hardening behavior during hydroforming has been experimentally investigated. The variation of flow stress was used as an index of strain hardening during respective processes and the flow stress was estimated from the correlationship between flow stress and effective strain. The local hardness after hydroformig was also predicted by effective strain. By using the inter-relationships between hardness-flow stress-effective strain at variable pre-strains, the strain hardening behavior during hydroforming has been successfully analyzed. The comparison of predicted hardness with measured hardness confirmed that the methodology used in this study was feasible and the strain hardening behavior can be quantitatively estimated.