The study is concerned with the theoretical and experimental investigation of hydroforming of sheet metal. The finite element method is employed to calculate the stress and strain distribution. The effect of blank size and die radius is also studied in the finite element analysis.
Experiments are carried out for hydroforming of cold-rolled steel sheets under various process conditions. The forming pressure is measured with respect to pole height. Strain distribution is determined from the photogridded specimens by using a three-point measurement technique newly devised in this study.
It is shown that theoretical prediction by FEM are in good agreement with the experimental observations both in forming pressure and in strain distributions.
