As a major type of heat exchanger, the steam generator (SG) produces steam from heat energy of a nuclear power plant reactor. The steam produced by the steam generator flows into a turbine, and plays an important role in electric power generation. The heat transfer tubes in the steam generator consist of approximately 10,000 U-shaped tubes, which perform a structural role and act as thermal boundaries. The heat transfer tubes conduct the thermal energy between the primary coolant (about $320^{\circ}C$, $157kgf/cm^2$) obtained from the reactor and the secondary coolant (about $260^{\circ}C$, $60kgf/cm^2$) as part of the secondary system. Recently, the heat transfer tubes in the steam generator of the pressurized water reactor (PWR) are primarily produced from Alloy 600 and Alloy 690 seamless tubes. As a pilot study to find process parameters for the cold U-bending process using rotary draw bending, numerical and experimental investigations were conducted to produce U-shaped tubes from long straight SUS304L seamless tubes. 3D finite element simulations were run using ABAQUS Explicit with consideration of the elastic recovery. The process parameters studied were the angular speed, the operation period and the bending angle. Experimental verifications were conducted to insure the suitability of the final U-shaped configurations with respect to both ovality and wall thickness.

The current study presents experimental and numerical results on the effect of ultrasonic vibrations on a cylindrical cup drawing of a cold rolled steel sheet(SPCC). An experimental apparatus, which can superimpose high frequency oscillations during deep drawing, was constructed by installing on the tooling ultrasonic vibration generators consisting of a piezoelectric transducer and a resonator. Conventional and vibration-assisted cylindrical deep drawing tests were conducted for various drawing ratios, and the limiting drawing ratios(LDR) for both methods were compared. To evaluate quantitatively the contribution from the ultrasonic vibrations to the reduction of friction between tools and material finite element analyses were conducted. Through a series of parametric analyses, the friction coefficients, which minimized the differences of punch load data between the experiments and simulations, were determined. The results show that the application of ultrasonic vibration effectively improves the LDR by reducing the friction between the tools and the material.

In order to improve efficiency, an outdoor unit using a refrigerant cooling method is designed into many air conditioner systems. The heat exchanger is composed of a Cu tube and an plate. The optimal design for the cold plate is very important because the efficiency of the heat transfer depends on the contact area between the Cu tube and the cold plate. The current study focused on the design of the cold plate to obtain a uniform contact between the Cu tube and the cold plate. Both FE(finite element) analysis and optimization were used in the design. The contact area between the tube and plate was predicted and improved by 16% through the press forming simulations. The springback after press forming was also reduced when the optimized design parameters were used. To verify the validity of the optimal cold plate design, a verification test was conducted. As a result, the performance of the heat exchanger improved by 34% when compared to benchmarked products.

The aim of the current study was to predict the plastic deformation behavior of a heated slab during hot rough rolling. FE-simulations were performed to investigate the metal flow and to locate the position of surface material from the slab through the rough rolling and onto the strip, using a material point tracking technique. In addition, experimental hot rolling trials were conducted where artificial defects were impressed onto a heated slab in order to validate the FE-simulation results. The simulated results show the same tendency of deformation behavior as the experimental measurements. The movement of slab defects from the side surface towards the strip center is directly linked to the extent of lateral spread during the rolling.

For electromagnetic forming(EMF) the most important feature is a forming coil which creates the electromagnetic force(Lorentz force), using current density and a magnetic field. Most previous papers have concentrated on the final configuration of the blank or the efficiency of EMF process. Studies focused on the design parameters affected by the forming coil performance have not been conducted. In order to design a suitable forming coil for an object, the current study uses LS-DYNA EM-Module to not only optimize the coil but also to examine the effect of coil performance. By this method a suitable forming coil was made and tested to determine whether or not good formability was achieved in a free bulge test Numerical analysis was also used. The workpiece was Al 1100-O with a thickness of 1.27mm and the coil was made from copper CW004A, which has good electrical conductivity and is suitable for electrical components.

Changes in the accuracy of the geometrical shape after a surface treatment are often very large due to the variation of the deformation mechanisms such as edge draw-in and the variation in springback caused by the reduction in the coefficient of friction between the tool and the blank. In the present study, the resulting shape accuracy due to the changes in deformation is quantitatively examined in order to predict the variation and to remove any undesirable additional tool compensation for the center pillar member made from steel with a UTS of 980MPa. The study examines important process parameters that are closely related with the edge draw-in such as the blank holding force, the contact status between the tool and the blank and the friction coefficient. The proposed method is applied within the finite element analysis of the stamping process for tools after a surface treatment and the amount of edge draw-in and flush values are compared between the analysis and experiments. The results demonstrate that the proposed quantification and finite element scheme are applicable to complicated tool compensation procedures and compensation can be designed effectively.

In the current study finite element forming analysis is performed to understand the final geometric accuracy limitations for the stamping of an automotive S-rail from four different steel sheets having tensile strengths of 340MPa, 440MPa, 590MPa and 780MPa. Comparisons between the analysis and the experiments for both springback and formability as measured by the amount of edge draw-in and the thickness distribution were conducted. The springback modes were classified according to a scheme proposed in the current investigation and the error was calculated using the normalized root mean square error method. While the analysis results show fairly good agreement with the experimental data for deformation and formability, the simulation accuracy is lower for predicting wall curl, camber and section twist as the UTS of steel sheet increases.