Geometry-dependent springback behaviors of thin-walled tube upon cold bending

As one kind of key lightweight components with enormous quantities and diversities, the bent tubular parts have attracted increasing applications in aerospace, automobile, etc. Thus, how the inevitable springback behaves under different bending specifications should be fully addressed to efficiently achieve the precision forming of various bent tubes. Taking the medium strength thin-walled 6061-T4 Al-alloy tube as the objective, via the deformation theory of plasticity, explicit/implicit FE method and experimental approaches, we explored and clarified the nonlinear springback rules of the tubes and corresponding mechanisms in universal rotary draw bending regarding angular springback and radius growth by deliberately changing the tube diameter D and wall thickness t. The geometry dependent springback behaviors of thin-walled tube upon cold bending are thus revealed: 1) With the increasing of D, the tangent tensile strain increases and the proportional coefficient decreases, which causes the angular springback to decrease, while the radius springback increases due to the larger bending radius. 2) With the increasing of t, the tangent tensile strain decreases and the proportional coefficient increases, resulting in the increase of both angular springback and radius springback. 3) Under the same D/t, the angular springback varies little, while the radius springback increases with the larger diameter D. 4) The D/t can be used as a reasonable nondimensional index to evaluate the springback angle; as to the radius growth, the individual effects of the D and t should be considered. 5) The verification of the above results was conducted by experiments and analytical analysis.