Insights on tube rotary draw bending with superimposed localized thermal field

The manufacturing of hollow section profiles using high strength metallic alloys may suffer of relevant drawbacks such as springback, reduced formability as well as wrinkling, which often limit the process capabilities. Localized heating of cross section sectors may allow a significant reduction of these issues thanks to the neutral layer shift and lowered yield stress. The paper describes an analytical approach to provide a fast prediction of the stress and strain distributions in the cross-section and their effects on the springback as consequence of the process thermal and mechanical parameters. Experimental and numerical validations confirm the analytical model reliability.