Hydroforming Behaviour of TIG-Welded Tubes of Austenitic Stainless Steel

Tube hydroformingTube hydroforming is an emerging manufacturing technique that uses pressurized fluid to deform the metal tubes into the desired shape. It is carried out by keeping tubular blank in the die, then deforming it into the final shape by applying fluid pressure using axial punches. Hollow components from TIG weldedTungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding tubes of Austenitic stainless steels, AISI304 find automobile applications, particularly exhaust systems. The microstructure has strong effect on formabilityFormability of AISI 304AISI 304 tubes and therefore the effect of microstructure on the formabilityFormability of tube is required to understand the correlation between microstructure and formabilityFormability. Hence, in the present study, TIG weld tubes of AISI304 deformed and deformation behaviour is studied in comparison with bulge ratio and grain sizeGrain size effect. It was noticed that bulge height (deformation) decreased with increased bulge width and fracture surface observed was ductileDuctile fracture nature along with fine grains.