An Experimental and Numerical Study to Analysis and Design of Sheet Hydroforming Process for an Automobile Fender Shell

A new approach for manufacturing of shell fender is proposed and has been examined numerically and experimentally. The new suggested method is based on sheet hydroforming process, which has a lot of advantages over conventional deep drawing process. After defining the shape of initial blank using an inverse finite element program, numerical evaluation of the proposed sheet hydroforming process for production of shell fender has been carried out using an explicit finite element code considering fluid pressure, boundary conditions and tools. Then experimental evaluation has been carried out using down sized specimen and the results have been compared with results of previous simulations. It has been shown that there are similar trends between finite element and experimental results.