Improving the Deformation Uniformity and Minimizing the Inner Surface Roughness in Rectangular Tube Drawing Process

This paper focuses on improving the quality of aluminum rectangular tube in the cold drawing process. The newly developed drawing tools (i.e., the drawing die and the plug) which are considered as one of the most significant factors influencing the final forming quality are proposed. The new-type drawing die is designed with the “convex hull” shape in sizing zone corner and the plug is featured with a “boss club” structure in sizing zone. The equivalent plastic strain, drawn tube’s dimensional accuracy, contact stress distribution, and drawing load have been analyzed for the conditions under which the original tools and the new-type ones have been used, respectively, based on finite element simulations. The simulation results show clearly that the discrepancy of plastic strain in the axial cross section and the tube axial elongation are smaller when the new-type die is employed, which indicates the more uniform metal deformation and steady material flow. Besides that, the fluctuation of wall thickness is also unobvious showing the new-type die is very helpful to improve the tube dimensional accuracy. The newly developed plug can cause higher compressive plastic strain and contact stress, which are crucial to guaranteeing the high surface quality. An experiment on the cold drawing process of the aluminum rectangular tube has been performed. The comparisons of the drawn tube dimensions, e.g., height/width and wall thickness, have been made between simulation results and practical production. Meanwhile, the surface finish has also been measured. The experimental result exhibits that the drawn tube can better fulfill the requirements of the design and usage when the new-type tool is adopted.