Bimetal cup hydroforming of Al/St and Cu/St composites: Adaptive finite element analysis and experimental study

An adaptive Finite element analysis (FEA) was proposed in this paper for the industrial design of bimetal conical-cylindrical cup hydroforming. Forming circumstances for the perfect and imperfect parts were concluded through adaptive FEA using the ANSYS parametric design language. Effective parameters, including pressure loading path, layer placement order, and thickness ratio, were investigated for hydroforming of Al/St and Cu/St composite sheets. Experimental tests were implemented to validate adaptive finite element results. Rupture failure upon the pressure path occurred on the contact area between the blank and punch tip radius at low pressures and on the transition area of the conical-cylindrical portion at high pressures. The proposed method is applicable for any cylindrical, conical, or cylindrical/conical shapes with different materials and dimensions. Therefore, this method is beneficial as a practical design tool for engineers and researchers working in the process design of hydroformed shell products.