Abstract
Thin-walled rectangular tube bent parts of continuous varying radii are widely used in aircraft, aerospace, aviation, radar, and several high-tech industries to save space and satisfy the internal structure compact of the specific products. In the previous years, the applications of thin-walled rectangular tubes were hindered because of the distortion in the cross-section area, which occurred during deformation. Nevertheless, due to its unique characteristic, free bending technology is highly suitable to form tubular components with a variable bending radii and bends in several planes. Thus, in this study, the deformation behavior of a thin-walled tube (with a rectangular cross-section area) of continuous varying radii during free bending technology was investigated. Besides, a stress analysis model was proposed to predict the equivalent stress and strain distribution. The proposed model was verified using simulations and experimentation. Furthermore, the influence of two key parameters (feeding speed and fillet radius) on the formability of a thin-walled rectangular tube was discussed. The remarkable results obtained from this study verify that free bending technology is a significant forming technology to manufacture rectangular thin-walled tubes with continuous varying radii.
•In this paper, combined with the free bending technology, the cross-section deformation behaviors of thin-walled rectangular tube of continuous varying radii are investigated using FE simulation and experiments.•In this paper, a mechnical analysis model was built to predict the equivalent stress and strain distribution during free bending process and was verified by experiments.•The parametrical studies had been conducted to disclose the influence law of Feeding speed and fillet radius on forming quality.The above work has contributed to manufacturing thin-walled rectangular tube bent parts of continuous varying radii.