ORIGINAL ARTICLE Finite element analysis on neck-spinning process of tube at elevated temperature Chi-Chen Huang & Jung-Chung Hung & Chinghua Hung & Chia-Rung Lin Received: 28 September 2010 /Accepted: 27 February 2011 /Published online: 11 March 2011 # Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011 Abstract Tube spinning process is a metal forming process used in the manufacture of axisymmetric products and has been widely used in various applications. Finite element analysis has been successfully applied to the tube spinning processes, but no temperature effects have been considered on neck-spinning. For this reason, the aim of this research is to investigate numerically the neck-spinning process of a tube at elevated temperature. The commercial software Abaqus/Explicit was adopted in the simulation. For the construction of the material model, special uniaxial tensile tests were conducted at elevated temperature and various strain rates, since the material is sensitive to strain rates at high temperature. Comparisons between experimental and simulation results on thickness distribution and the outer contour of the spun tube are discussed. During the final stage, the average deviations between the simulation and experiment were 10.65% in thickness and 3.03% in outer contour. Good agreement was found between experimental and simulation results. The influence of the coefficient of friction, roller translation speeds, and the tip radius of the rollers were also investigated through numerical simulation. Keywords Finite element analysis . Hot neck-spinning . Strain rate . Tube spinning 1 Introduction The tube spinning process is a metal forming process used in the manufacture of axisymmetric products. The process is often used to manufacture high-precision and high- strength tubular components. The spinning process makes it easy to control the dimensions of the tube. The strength of the tube also increases during the process. Other advantages include a high material usage rate, fewer processing stages, a low forming force, die-less, and flexibility in manufac- turing. For these reasons, tube spinning process has been widely used in various applications. Several researchers have conducted experimental and theoretical investigations on the influence of the various parameters on the spinning process [1–8]. Progress in computation capability and software coding has enabled the application of finite element (FE) analysis to the tube spinning process. Hauk et al. [9] used an axisymmetric model and a 1/36 three-dimensional (3D) model to simulate the flow-splitting process. They compared the difference between results of 2D and 3D models. Iguchi et al. [10] used a dynamic explicit code DYNA-3D to analyze the spinning manufacturing process for exhaust system compo- nents of motor vehicles. The results showed the distribution of stress and strain which evolved in the material during spinning. This provided useful information for the predic- tion of failures during spinning. Hua et al. [11] used ANSYS to establish a 3D elastic–plastic finite model for the three-roller backward spinning of a cylindrical work- piece. The simulation results showed a variety of phenom- ena that occur during spinning. These included bell-mouth C.-C. Huang : C. Hung (*) Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 University Road, Hsinchu 30010 Taiwan, Republic of China e-mail: chhung@mail.nctu.edu.tw J.-C. Hung Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taiping, Taichung, Taiwan, Republic of China C.-R. Lin Mosa Industrial Corporation, Huwei, Yunlin, Taiwan, Republic of China Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2011) 56:1039–1048 DOI 10.1007/s00170-011-3247-0