Evaluation of models for tube material characterization with the tube bulging test in an industrial setting

It is now well recognized that the material data obtained from a tensile test is less appropriate than those from a Tube Bulging Test (TBT) for a finite element simulation of tube hydroforming. However, the manufacturers still use classical data (often tensile test data) for designing metal operations due to the lack of standard for the TBT and a more complex post processing analysis of experimental measures. Getting the hardening curve from the tube bulging test requires the use of an analytical or numerical model. In this paper, three models for post-processing measures obtained from the TBT are compared based on the same experimental procedure. Thanks to a preliminary step, consisting of the validation of the analytical models through the use of finite element simulations of the TBT, it highlights that the results obtained for the local (stress and strain) and global components (the thickness distribution along the tube and the deformed tube profile) are very close, whatever the models. The test configuration (die radius and free length) seems to have no significant impact on the resulting stress-strain curve for the three models. The three models are used for post processing tube bulging tests performed on AISI304, INCONEL and Copper tubes validating their capacity for tube characterization on different materials. Finally, this study demonstrates that the Boudeau-Malecot Model can be used to obtain hardening curve from TBT without a loss of accuracy compared to more complex post-processing models and with an important gain of quality compared to tensile test.