Abstract
Because of the social needs for energy saving and the rigid environmental regulation, the development of light materials and new economical manufacturing technologies have been actively investigated. Recently, the hydroforming of high strength aluminum tube has attracted great interest due to its good strength-to-weight ratio, which could play an important role in lightweighting of automobile. However, the limited formability of high strength aluminum alloys is considered to hinder the active application of the hydroforming process. In this paper, the hydroformability of aluminum tubes with different heat treatments was investigated as the basic research of the hydroforming process for the high strength aluminum tubes.