Experimental and Numerical Analyses of Tubular Electrohydraulic Forming Process

Electrohydraulic forming (EHF) is a kind of high speed forming process, which deforms the metal by shock wave through instantaneous discharge of high voltage in water. Compared with the traditional forming methods, this high speed forming process can greatly improve the formability of the materials. There are many processing factors that affect the forming efficiency and performance of the electrohydraulic forming process, one of which is the discharge voltage between the electrodes. In this paper, three electrohydraulic forming experiments with various die shapes were carried out under various discharge voltage conditions. And the bulge height and axial length of the aluminum alloy A6061 tubes under different conditions were compared. Besides, finite element numerical simulation was also performed to quantitatively investigate the deformation history of the tube.