ANALYSIS OF PLASTIC FORMING PARAMETERS IN AISI 441 STAINLESS STEEL

Plastic deformation is the most common technique adopted to manufacture complex shape pieces in the most efficient way. Even higher requirements need to be faced in the different applications. In order to target such requirement quality and compliance tests are carried out aimed to guarantee that these standards are faced. This often means a waste of material and economic resources. A far as concerns welded stainless steel pipes many criticises affecting the general trend of subsequent machining need to be considered. Such critical issues are more evident in the case of ferritic stainless steel with respect to austenitic ones. Therefore, the study of operating and geometric parameters is fundamental in the production process of ferritic stainless-steel tubes, whose use is mainly for the automotive industry. The possibility to simulate by finite element method (FEM) allows to evaluate the effect of geometric parameters and process constraints on plastic deformation tubes capability, thus allowing to properly fit the plastic deformation process to the target shape as a function of the adopted steel.