Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate changes in the wall thickness of tube sinking and working forces by the upper bound method and ABAQUS code. The independent variables are ; workpiece material, original wall thickness of tube, die angle, friction, and reduction of diameter. The results indicate that these five variables are factors of the increase in wall-thickness and working forces. Three variables, a inner tube wall angle and two angles of the velocity discontinuous surfaces, are optimized in this proposed velocity field by the upper bound method. In this method, we can estimate the working forces and final tube thicknesses similar to actual forming process. Optimum process variables which are obtained by upper bound method are used in ABAQUS pre-model.
