j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 2 0 8 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 5362

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Cold rotary forming of thin-wall component

from at-disc blank
C.C. Wong , A. Danno, K.K. Tong, M.S. Yong
Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Forming Technology Group,
71 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 638071, Singapore

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:

Flow forming, one of the rotary-forming processes, is used mainly to produce thin-walled

Received 18 October 2006

high-precision tubular components. Due to its exibility and low tool load requirement,

Received in revised form

the process has great potential to be extended to the forming of net-shape components for

22 October 2007

thin and intricate features from bulk raw materials, such as solid bar ingot, cast and forged

Accepted 23 December 2007

performs. In the work reported in this paper, a ow-forming facility was established to
investigate the feasibility of forming thin-walled cups from at-disc blanks by investigating
the effects of roller geometry, degree of material reduction and roller geometry on material

Keywords:

ow. In addition, a 3D Finite Element (FE) model was developed to simulate the bending

Rotary forming

process, based on the experimental conditions.

Flow forming

The results showed that it is possible to adopt a two-step forming process, bending and

Incremental forming

ow forming to enable material ow along the mandrel in order to form a thin-wall cup

Finite Element simulation

component using two different proles and adopting an axial roller movement. Quality of
the cups formed depends on the diameter reduction, starting disc thickness of the blank and
the number of pass in the ow-forming stage. The results predicted by the FE simulation was
compared with the experimental results and showed close agreement. This work illustrates
the possibility of adopting ow-forming processes for the production of thin section, which
would be difcult and expensive to produce by press forming. In addition, it also showed
that although FEM is an effective tool to optimize process parameters, computational time
remains as the main barrier for its prevalent usage especially for incremental processes
such as ow forming and spinning processes.
2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1.

Introduction

In recent years, there is a growing demand for light-weight

and higher value-added components by the OEMs of transportation industries. These can be achieved with lower density
materials and new structural designs. As component shapes
are becoming more complicated, machining is not a costeffective process for producing these components and should
be minimized as a production operation. As a result, precision

Corresponding author. Tel.: +65 67938449; fax: +65 67925362.

E-mail address: ccwong@simtech.a-star.edu.sg (C.C. Wong).
0924-0136/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2007.12.123

forging, or net-shape forging, has become increasingly popular

due to savings in material, energy and nishing steps. However, as manufacturers strive to reduce weight and cost, many
of the new components, because of their shape complexity
and complicated tool design and high load requirements, are
challenging the current precision forging technologies beyond
its current level of technology. In order to meet this requirement, there is a renewed interest in incremental forming,
especially rotary-type incremental forming processes, such

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as swaging, cross-wedge rolling, ring rolling, rotary forging,

conventional spinning and ow forming. As these processes
involved plastic deformation of small volume of the workpiece at a time, the power and working forces required are
reduced signicantly, allowing more complicated components
to be produced on relatively small machines using simple tool
shapes. In addition, tool life is much improved as compared
with forging processes.
In the last two decades or so, ow forming (including
shear-forming process) has gradually matured as a rotary
metal-forming process for the production of engineering components in small to medium batch quantities. Due to its
inherent advantages such as exibility, simple tooling, low
forming loads and consequently smaller equipments, ow
forming has enabled customers to optimize designs and
reduce weight and cost, all of which are vital, especially in
the automotive industries.
The ow-forming process, which grew out of spinning, is
a process during which the workpiece is rotated while the
tool, which rotates about its own axis, may also move axially
or radially to the axis of rotation of workpiece, manipulating it to the nal desired shape. It is most widely used to
produce thin-walled, high-precision tubular products where
tubular workpiece is held onto the mandrel and the material
is being displaced axially by one or more rollers moving axially along the mandrel. Several researchers have conducted
experimental and theoretical analysis in the ow forming of
tubes to evaluate the power and load requirements as well
as the effects of process variables such as feed rate, approach
angle and percentage reduction on surface nish of the formed
workpiece and forming load (Yao and Makoto, 2002; Jahazi and
Ebrahimi, 1997; Park et al., 1997; Singhal et al., 1990; Hayama
and Kudo, 1979; Wang et al., 1989; Gur and Tirosh, 1982). The
analyses have been based mainly on energy method (Hayama
and Kudo, 1979), slip line elds (Wang et al., 1989), upper
bounds (Park et al., 1997) as well as experimental work was
conducted by Gur and Tirosh (1982), Yao and Makoto (2002),
Jahazi and Ebrahimi (1997), as well as Singhal et al. (1990).
Several researchers have also attempted to use the Finite
Element method to analyse the ow-forming process. Li et al.
(1998) developed a 3D FE program, 3D spin, to simulate the
process of backward ow forming of tubes. In their model,
the internal surface nodal points of the tube contacting the
mandrel are restrained in the radial direction and the nodal
points at the end of the upspun tube are restrained in three
directions. Xu et al. (2001) built a 3D rigidplastic FE program,
which is suited to the nature of ow forming of tubes, to analyse the distribution of stress and strain rate of the deformation
eld. In their 3D model, in order to improve the calculating
efciency and accuracy, only one-third of the tubular blank
was modelled. Xue et al. (2001) adopted the dynamic explicit
FE code, ADINA, to analyse the tube stagger spinning process,
where the rollers are offset or staggered at a particular distance in the axial and radial directions. A one-third model was
adopted and the inuence of inertial force in the calculation
was ignored. Hauk et al. (2000) adopted both 2D and 3D FE analysis for the simulation of combined ow forming and splitting
of disk blanks. For the 2D model, an axisymmetrical approach
was adopted and a comparison between results obtained from
commercial FE code, DEFORM D and NARC/Autoforge was con-

ducted. For their 3D model (Hauk et al., 2000), only a sector at

the outer disk blank and half thickness of the original blank
were modelled.
Recently, Hua et al. (2005) developed a 3D elastic plastic FE
model for the three-roller backward ow forming of cylindrical tubes. The phenomenon such as bell mouthing, build-up,
bulging in front of and between rollers, diametral growth as
well as the axial forming load was simulated. Wong et al.
(2004) have reported the use of explicit FE code to analyse the
ow forming of solid cylindrical shaft using commercial FE
software, ABAQUS Explicit. He reported that although computational time can be reduced using mass scaling, care has to
be taken as it can result in considerable dynamic effects which
can result in unreliable simulation results.
Flow-forming technology is applicable to a wide range of
raw material types and a greater range of shapes than has so
far been attempted. For instance, there seems to be a useful
opportunity to ow form cast or forged shapes, to utilize the
best features of two different processes. Hence, the aim of this
work is to examine the aspect of expanding the capabilities of
ow-forming process, by undertaking experimental and modelling work, to form a thin-wall cup using a simple perform
shape (disc).

2.

Experimentation

2.1.

Flow-forming equipment

In this work, a Mazak NC lathe was utilized as a ow-forming

machine. Only one roller was used in each experiment. A roller
tool was designed and built to accommodate the lathe tool
post. The mandrel was clamped using the lathes chuck and
the workpiece was xed onto the mandrel and tightened by
a bolt. In addition, in order to minimize radial deection of
the mandrel during ow-forming operation, a mandrel holder
was designed, to x onto the lathe bed. Fig. 1 shows the experimental set-up.
Two different rollers were used, as shown in Fig. 2. Roller A
(shown in Fig. 2a) has an approach angle of 60 and the second
roller, roller B, has an approach angle of 20 , shown in Fig. 2b.

2.2.

Workpiece

In order to reduce the loading on the machine and prevent

severe radial deection of the roller tool, an annealed alu-

Fig. 1 Experimental set-up.

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Fig. 2 Roller geometry and workpiece.

minum alloy, A6061 was used as the workpiece and mounted

onto the mandrel. The hardness of the aluminum disc is
approximately 49 HV. A at-disc blank of diameter 70 mm and
thickness of 5 mm and 10 mm, as shown in Fig. 2c was used as
the starting workpiece.

parallel to its axis at a preset interference (diameter reduction)

for a pre-dened length. The roller path for both sequence are
shown in Fig. 3.

2.3.

The rotation of the workpiece was xed at 250 rpm and the
axial feed rate of the roller was set at 1 mm/s (0.24 mm/rev).
Cutting oil was used at the interface between the roller and
the workpiece as well as the interface between the workpiece
and mandrel. The initial thicknesses of the workpieces investigated were 5 mm and 10 mm.
The diameter reduction, red (%) of the blank was dened
as

Flow-forming sequence

Two ow-forming steps were proposed in this experimental

study to investigate the feasibility of forming thin-wall cups
from at-disc blanks. In the rst step, roller A (Fig. 2a) was
proposed to bend the disc blank to the preset diameter into
a cup-shape product. In the second step, roller B (Fig. 2b) was
used to ow form the wall of the cup onto the mandrel to
obtain uniform wall thickness, desired internal diameter and
increase height of the cup.
For both forming sequences, the mandrel and the workpiece were rotating and the roller was fed along the workpiece

2.4.

Flow-forming conditions

red (%) =

 Diameter reduction 

Fig. 3 Flow-forming sequence.

Initial diameter

100

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3.

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Finite Element modelling

3.1.
Difculties in modelling and simulating
ow-forming process
The ow-forming process by nature, like other incremental
forming processes, is very difcult to model due to the following factors:

(i) As it involves only localized deformation, only a small portion of the workpiece is in contact with the roller at any
given time and due to the cyclic character in the application of forces, there is frequent and rapid change in the
contact condition.
(ii) As the workpiece rotates continuously and its transient
plastic deformation is very small, ne mesh discretisation is necessary in order to allow continuity of contact as
nodal forces transfer from one element to the next.
(iii) Large number of rotations of the workpiece may result in
volume change in FE analysis and also increases computational time.
(iv) For most incremental forming processes like rotary forging, cross wedge rolling, spinning and ow forming, good
representation of the actual process can be achieved only
by using 3D model.

As a result of the above factors, modelling of incremental forming processes is inherently very time consuming and
involves large computational resources. Thus, efcient Finite
Element software with robust and unique features to model
as well as simulate the ow-forming process is necessary.
Although, the author has proven in previous studies that the
explicit FE code is ideal to tackle some issues in simulating
ow-forming process, the main drawback has always been the
inherent existence of the dynamic effects which user has to
control if he/she were to increase the very small time step
required for explicit formulation.

3.2.

Proposed FE model

In this study, Finite Element modelling and simulation using

the commercial FE implicit code, DEFORMTM 3D V6.0 was
attempted to model the rst step of the cup-forming process, i.e. the bending step. The initial meshes and model
set-up are shown in Fig. 4. The workpiece was considered as an
elasticplastic model and the roller and mandrel was modelled
as a rigid surface. In order to overcome the difculties in simulation with regards to rotating the workpiece (as mentioned in
the previous section), the workpiece was xed and the roller
was chosen to rotate around the axis of the workpiece at the
same rotational speed as that of the rotating workpiece in the
actual process. By adopting this method, not only can volume
be controlled, but also a signicant reduction in computational
time can be achieved. In addition, to model the free spinning
of the roller around its own axis, a negligible torque value was
prescribed around the rollers neutral axis.
The friction between the roller and the workpiece interface
was expressed as a number known as the friction factor m,

Fig. 4 Proposed FE model.

dened as follows:

 = mk = m
3
where  is the shear stress, k is the shear strength and  is
the ow stress of the workpiece material. The constant shear
friction factor was chosen for this study because ow forming is a process which involves bulk material deformation.
Since constant lubricant was being fed between the interface
of the roller and workpiece during the actual ow-forming process, the friction is considered low and is assumed at a value
of m = 0.1 between them. For the interface between the mandrel and workpiece, a sticking friction was prescribed to best
simulate the experimental conditions as the workpiece is not
supposed to slide along the mandrel.
The material properties were determined using the uniaxial compression test and expressed in the form of a power law,
 = Kn , where k is the strength coefcient and n is the strainhardening exponent. The workpiece was meshed using 3D
tetrahedral elements where the forming area has a higher density than the rest of the workpiece, which resulted in 45,000
elements. In order to ensure continuity of contact as nodal
forces transfer from one element to the next and to reduce
severe mesh deformation, a very small and appropriate time
step of 0.0025 s/step was chosen after several trials. The general conditions for the model are shown in Table 1, which are
similar to the experimental conditions.

Table 1 FE simulation parameters

Condition
Material
Material properties
Flat-disc diameter
Flat-disc thickness
Friction model
Friction factor
No. of elements
Axial feed rate (mm/rev)
Time-step size

Description
A6061 aluminum (annealed condition)
 = Kn , K = 220 MPa, n = 0.211
70 mm
5 mm
Shear friction
0.1
45,000
0.24
0.0025

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Fig. 5 Deformed shape with diameter reduction for starting thickness of 5 mm and 10 mm.

4.

Results and discussion

4.1.

Step 1bending process

Fig. 5 shows the nal deformed shape of the disc blank after
the forming process for thicknesses of 5 mm and 10 mm at
different diameter reductions and Fig. 6 shows the metal ow
predicted by FE simulation as well as cross-section of a experimental prole for a thickness of 5 mm. For both starting

thickness of the disc blanks, it can be observed experimentally

that a cup-shaped component was produced by simply translating the roller in the axial direction after a certain diameter
reduction was set. However, on the other hand, too small a
reduction, e.g. 3%, will result in insignicant cup height and
wall thickness due to insufcient material being deformed.
At the outset of the roller deformation as shown in Fig. 7,
the metal is mainly being deformed towards the mandrel in
a bending mode. As the roller traversed axially, the material
also ows predominantly in the axial direction, with a ange

Fig. 6 Deformed shape predicted by FE simulation.

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Fig. 7 Predicted metal ow at different roller strokes and comparison with experimental prole.

Fig. 8 Formation of step along the internal diameter of the cup.

occurring in front of the roller. The ange will gradually reduce

in height as the roller moved further axially and will deform
under the roller to produce a step (Fig. 8) along the internal
diameter. This is being conrmed by the experimental prole
shown in Fig. 8 where a step is visible for all reductions. The
formation of the step along the internal diameter is mainly
caused by the bending mode during the initial stage of forming that resulted in the exterior of the ange that is in direct
contact with the roller to ow faster than the interior surface facing the mandrel. In general, the nal prole predicted
by FE simulation is in close agreement with the experimenta
l prole.
Fig. 9 shows the variation of cup height and wall thickness with diameter reduction. It can be seen from the gure
that for both starting disc thicknesses, cup height increased
linearly with increased in diameter reduction. However, for
diameter reduction above 19%, the height of the cup increased
drastically. This is because for diameter reduction above 19%,
the material that was being deformed contacted the mandrel
at the beginning of roller axial translation, which forced the

Fig. 9 Variation of cup height and wall thickness with

diameter reduction.

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59

Fig. 10 Cracking due to large diameter reduction.

material to ow axially along the mandrel, thereby elongating

the formed cup. On the other hand, for diameter reduction less
than 19%, the cup was practically formed in air, i.e. without
any support on the inner walls of the cup (see Fig. 3a), and
there is no contact between the inner wall (internal diameter of the formed cup) and the mandrel, and the cup formed
was parallel to the horizontal axis of the mandrel. The reason for this phenomenon is that the rigidity of the cup formed
by the roller is able to withstand the localized deformation
that is induced by the roller during the forming process. This
phenomenon is also conrmed by the nal deformed prole
predicted by FE simulation for diameter reduction of 10 mm
(14%) and 12 mm (17%), shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen from
the cross-section prole shown in Fig. 6 that the inner diameter of the cups are smaller that the outer diameter of the
mandrel for both reduction of 14% and 17%.
It can also be seen from Fig. 9 that for various diameter
reduction, the variation in wall thickness for disc thickness
of 5 mm and 10 mm is not very signicant. Moreover, taller
cups were produced for starting disc thickness of 10 mm. The
taller cups produced using larger starting disc thickness may
be explained by the fact that higher volume of material was
displaced axially compared to smaller disc thickness. In other
words, the height of the cups is directly affected by the diameter reduction. On the other hand, the diameter reduction does
not affect the wall thickness. Wall thickness is largely affected
by the nose radius (see Fig. 2) of the roller which determines
the amount of plastic deformation induced along the wall. As
a result, the variation in wall thickness for both starting disc

Fig. 11 Bulging phenomenon at bottom of the cup formed.

thickness of 5 mm and 10 mm is not signicant as the same

roller nose radius was used.
A critical forming limit occurred at diameter reduction of
25%. For both starting disc thicknesses of 5 mm and 10 mm,
severe breakage occur during the initial forming stage for
diameter reduction above 25%, as shown in Fig. 10. This may
be due to the heavy material accumulation in front of the
roller for high diameter reduction, resulting in material owing predominantly in the radial direction as the roller moved
axially. In addition, the heavy accumulation at the front of the
roller, from high diameter reduction, gave rise to very high
axial stress. This in turn causes severe bulging which leads to
instability and ultimately cracking of the ange in front of the
roller.
For blank disc thickness of 10 mm, bulging of material
appeared at the bottom of the cup, i.e. at the beginning of
the roller axial path, as shown in Fig. 11. This may be due to
the fact that for higher starting disc thickness, more material was being deformed by the roller which led to some
material escaping underneath the roller, owing in the opposite direction of the roller axial translation. Another reason
for this phenomenon is the relative larger radial deection
due to high diameter reduction, which encouraged material to ow circumferentially. Moreover, this bulging effect

Fig. 12 Effective stress distribution on the outside of the cup.

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Fig. 13 Effective stress distribution along cup wall.

did not occur at all reductions for disc thickness of 5 mm

as well as small diameter reduction at disc thickness of
10 mm.
Fig. 12 shows the predicted effective stress distribution
between the workpiece and the roller contact. From the gure, it can be seen that only localized deformation occurred
between the workpiece and the roller during the forming process which is typical of incremental rotary-forming processes.
The maximum effective stress value increased as the roller
stroke increased with maximum stress occurring towards the
end of the roller stroke and has a value of about 450 MPa. Fig. 13
shows the effective stress distribution along the cup wall. Maximum effective stress occurred along the region when the
roller contacts the workpiece and decreases along the height
of the cup wall.
Fig. 14 shows the axial stress distribution along the cup
wall. It can be seen from the gure that tensile stress mainly
occurred at the region where the roller contacted the workpiece. This is due to the fact that as the roller moved
axially, material underneath the roller is mainly owing in
the opposite direction to the roller. Axial compressive stress

Fig. 14 Axial stress distribution along cup wall.

Fig. 15 Effective plastic strain distribution.

mainly occurred along the approach angle of the roller as

the contact material along the approach angle of the roller
is mainly owing in the same direction as the roller movement.
Fig. 15 shows the predicted plastic strain value along the
outer surface of the cup. Maximum plastic strain occurs along
the cup height as the roller stroke increased with a maximum
value of 0.8.

4.2.

Step 2ow-forming process

In order to elongate the cup along the mandrel and to control the dimension of the formed cup in step 1, ow-forming
process was proposed as a second step to obtain the nal product. Attempts were made to conduct ow-forming operation
on cups with inner diameter larger than the mandrel diameter. However, it required an addition of 25 steps just to obtain
the same inner diameter as the mandrel, which is deemed
ineffective. In addition, attempts were also made on cups produced from starting disc thickness of 10 mm. However, due to
the bulging effect as mentioned in the previous section, which
resulted in uneven outer diameter, the excess material in the
bulging area ow over the material at the smaller diameter
which resulted in overlapping defects.
Figs. 16 and 17 show the percentage increase in internal
diameter with cup depth having 5-mm initial disc thickness
and diameter reduction of 20% and 22% during the rst step.
As this step is similar to the ow forming of cylindrical tubes,
the thickness reduction for the ow-forming operation was
recommended to be controlled at 2030% (Xu et al., 2001) so
as to prevent circumferential ow due to too low a reduction
and bell mouthing defects due to too high a reduction. From
both gures, it can be seen that after the rst pass, the internal
diameter of the cup was uneven and increases along the height

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Fig. 16 Percent increase in internal diameter for ow

forming of cups for initial starting disc thickness of 5 mm
and diameter reduction of 20%.

Fig. 19 Hardness measurement position.

Fig. 17 Percent increase in internal diameter for ow

forming of cups for initial starting disc thickness of 5 mm
and diameter reduction of 22%.

of the cup. However, the accuracy of the internal diameter was

improved with each subsequent pass and the dimension of the
internal diameter is tending towards uniformity along the cup
height at about 3rd or 4th pass. It is believed that the internal
diameter will be uniform if the material can ow along a longer
mandrel as compared to the one used in this study.
Moreover, it can be seen from Fig. 18 that the wall thickness along the cup height was uniform for both cases. This
shows that the variation of the internal and external diame-

Fig. 20 Rotary forming of thin cup shape from at-disc

blank.

ter of the cup was largely due to the elastic deection of the
roller which was mainly caused by the increased hardness
along the wall thickness of the cup, as shown in Fig. 19 due
to work hardening during the rst forming step. The hardness
was measure at the cross-section of the cup in two areas, 1
and 2. In each area, the hardness readings at the top, center
and bottom portion of the cup wall were measured. It can be
seen from the readings (Table 2) that the portion of the cup
wall nearer to the roller deformation, i.e. the top portion, has
the highest hardness value due to the high deformation which

Table 2 Hardness values measured

Area 1 (HV)

Fig. 18 Thickness variation along cup height for cups after

20% and 22% diameter reduction in the rst forming step.

Top
Center
Bottom

69.4
63.4
54.7

Area 2 (HV)
81.6
64.9
57.5

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gave rise to larger work hardening. In addition, it can be seen

that in all portions, area 2 gives a higher hardness reading as
compared to area 1. This is because area 2 was formed as a
result of increasing roller axial translation which induced further deformation on the material, leading to increased work
hardening.
The nal wall thickness achieved for the tests shown in
Fig. 20 are 0.81 mm, respectively. Further reduction in wall
thickness is possible but control in wall-thickness reduction
is critical to ensure stability in the forming mode and surface
nish of the cup.

5.

Conclusions

In this work, the possibility of forming a thin-wall component

of 0.81 mm (Fig. 14) by a two-step rotary-forming process,
using mutli-pass ow forming in the second step has been
demonstrated. Based on the outcomes, the following conclusions may be drawn:
A roller with an approach angle of 60 can be used to produce
an initial cup shape from a at-disc blank.
In the rst forming step, reduction above 25% will result in
severe cracking of the disc at roller contact area for starting
disc thickness of 5 mm and 10 mm.
In the rst forming step, diameter reduction above 19% will
allow the material to ow along the mandrel thereby achieving greater height.
In the rst forming step, forming of thick disc thickness,
e.g. 10 mm, will require higher rigidity for both the mandrel
and machine in order to prevent the bulging phenomenon
which will lead to subsequent defects in step 2.
In the rst forming step, wall thickness of the wall depends
on nose radius of the roller and cup height depends on the
initial diameter reduction.
The diameter of the mandrel has to be changed according
to the required internal diameter for step 2 so as to prevent
unnecessary ow-forming passes, which will lead to galling
effects due to excessive work hardening.
Multi-pass ow forming in the second step can improve the
dimensional accuracy and the uniformity of the internal
diameter.
Hardness increases along the cup height and along the wall
thickness, with higher hardness value on the exterior of the
cup.

FE modelling and simulation was used with success, to predict formed shapes as well as stresses and strain during the
forming process.
The potential of ow forming to form shapes difcult to be
formed by presses, has been demonstrated.

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