• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.20-27
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• 2015

Hot tensile tests were conducted at different temperatures ranging from $20^{\circ}C$ to $550^{\circ}C$ to evaluate the mechanical properties of Al5052 seamless tubes. Such tubes can provide the technological foundation for complex forming using hot air bulging. Hot air bulging is one of the recently developed hydroforming techniques and it has some limitations in terms of cycle times. The benefits of hot air bulging are weight and cost savings through part consolidation and reduced post-forming processes such as welding and piercing. In order to extend the forming limits of Al lightweight material hot air bulging was investigated. A heated tube was placed in a heated die and sealed at the ends by sealing cylinders. The heated tube was subsequently expanded against the die cavity wall by internal pressure using air medium. The results of the current study show that axial feeding speed and air pressure have an effect on the formability of Al tubes during air bulging at elevated temperatures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.222-225
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• 2008

Due to new requirements of the automotive industry, concerning lightweight and non-corroding construction, new production methods, The Hot Air Forming process of aluminum alloys are of special interest. The disadvantage of aluminum alloy is the poorer formability compared to steel. The Hot Air Forming process is one of the forming process receiving recent attention. In the current study, Fabrication of aluminum rear subframe has been attempted using seam and seamless aluminum tubes. On the base of hot workability of the extruded tube and PAM-STAMP simulation results, Optimum condition for fabricating aluminum rear sub(lame parts by Hot Air Forming could be determined.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.145-147
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• 2009

The benefits of hydroforming technology are known as weight and cost savings through part consolidation and reduced post-forming processes such as welding and piercing. Hydroforming technology has some weaknesses in terms of process cycle times. But, as the hydraulic system and process designs are continuously developed, the cycle time is also reduced to acceptable and competitive levels. Hot air bulging is one of recently developed hydroforming techniques. Hot air bulging in order to further extend the forming degrees of Al lightweight material is investigated. A heated tube is placed in a heated die and sealed at the ends by sealing cylinders. The tube is subsequently expanded against the die cavity wall by internal pressure provided by air medium. The result of this study shows that axial feeding speed and air pressure have an effect on formability of Al air bulging at elevated temperature.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.26-29
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• 2008

Recently, the hydroforming of high strength aluminum tubes has many studies and applications in manufacturing industry, especially in automotive industry. But high strength aluminum tube has limited expansion capability at most 15% at normal temperature. New manufacturing process, called hot air forming, is introduced to apply aluminum tube to the automotive sub frame components which have complex shape and require high expansion ratio about 40%. The process is carried out at the elevated temperature above $500^{\circ}C$, so numerous material properties and process parameters related to high temperature should be investigated and determined to get a sound product. In this paper, the hot air forming process of automotive sub frame was investigated. The effect of the forming parameters such as the temperature of tool, axial feeding and gas pressure are analyzes by using explicit finite element method.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.35-36
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• 2010

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.92-92
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• 2006

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2011.06a
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• pp.473-474
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• 2011

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.116-119
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• 2007

The application of light weight materials, such as aluminum alloy, has been limited due of their poor formability. Especially, aluminum alloy tube has limited expansion capability at most 15% at room temperature. New manufacturing process, called hot air forming, is introduced to apply aluminum tube to the automotive suspension components which have complex shape and require high expansion ratio about 40%. The process is carried out at the elevated temperature above $500^{\circ}C$, so numerous material properties and process parameters related to the high temperature should be investigated and determined to get a sound product. In this study, the effect of thermal properties and forming parameters such as the temperature of tool, axial feeding and gas pressure are analyzed by using explicit finite element method.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.29 no.11
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• pp.1190-1198
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• 2012

A hot forming of large thick Al plate using a grid-type hybrid die is a process to make a shell plate for the production of a spherical LNG tank. This process is characterized by using a grid-typed die with an additional air cooling system for reducing the cooling time of the heated plate after hot forming. The process consists of the plate's feeding, heating, forming and cooling in detail and each of them is continuously performed along the rail. This paper was designed to propose the analytical and experimental methods for determining the convection and interfacial heat transfer coefficients required in hot forming analysis of Al plate. These values in the analysis are to reproduce numerically the cooling performance of grid-typed die and cooling device. Interfacial heat transfer was obtained from the heat transfer experiments for different pressures and inverse analysis method. To verify the efficiency of the coefficient values obtained from above methods, FE analysis and experiment of the hot spherical-forming process were conducted for a small-scaled model. The convection coefficient was also calculated from flow analysis of air released by cooling device within grid-typed die using ANSYS-CFX.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.316-323
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• 2011

The hot curvature-forming of large aluminum thick plate using a grid-typed hybrid die is a process for the production of a spherical LNG tank. Many variables such as the initial die surface quality, grid size, grid thickness, size of blank plate and cooling line design, control the success of the process. In addition, the plate used in this process is generally larger than $10{\times}10m$ in size. Thus, it is very difficult to predict the surface characteristics of the plate during forming and to measure the different parameters due to the high cost of the experiments. In order to optimize the process design for the grid-type die, the development of an analytical method to predict the surface characteristics of the final product in hot curvature-forming is needed. This paper described the development of the method and procedures for FE simulations of the hot curvature-forming process, including hot forming, air flow, cooling, and thermal deformation analyses. An experiment for a small scale model of the process was conducted to check the validity of the numerical method. The results showed that the curvature of the plate in the analysis agrees well with that of the experiment within 0.037 and 0.016% tolerance margins for its side and corner, respectively.