Forming of the precision aluminum tube for a light weight propeller shaft

In today's reality, which requires automotive technical development to be environmentally friendly and highly efficient, lightening the weight of the propeller shaft for automobile actuation is also required. Some automobile manufacturers have developed and are applying the propeller shaft for automobile actuators to their production and accomplishing more than 30% reduction in weight by replacing steel materials with high strength aluminum alloy. For the propeller shaft, manufacturing technology of aluminum tube with high stiffness and high precision is required due to the problems of noise and vibration. In this study, the seamless tubes of aluminum alloy 7003 are hot extruded and cold drawn. The forming processes are simulated and modified to reduce and make uniform any plastic deformation. More precious tubes can be obtained by modifications. Extrusion with hollow billet and optimization of drawing tools were introduced for the production of an aluminum tube with high strength and high precision for the propeller shaft.