THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE MULTILAYER TUBE DRAWING

The paper concerns drawing of a multilayer tube through a conical die. The drawn material is composed of two steel tubes separated by a rubb er tube. This type of part is widely used in automotive industry as si lentblocks. The traditional technological process is based on mounting of a short rubber sleeve between two steel sleeves. The new idea of s ilentblocks manufacturing involves drawing of a long steel-rubber-stee l tube. To examine the process, experimental and theoretical investiga tions are performed. In the theoretical analysis a steady state elasto plastic finite element method is employed. The problem is formulated i n the Eulerian reference frame. The solution consist of the minimizati on of the deformation power with respect to a kinematically admissible velocity field and the integration of the stress-rate constitutive eq uations. The stress rate equations are integrated in the final configu ration without linearization. Theoretical results are compared with ex perimental data for drawing of a steel-rubber-steel tube.