Abstract: Thin-walled tube NC bending process will be widely employed in automobile and aviation industries for its high efficiency, precision and satisfaction of lightweight products. The deform law of this process must be studied in order to totally manufacture qualified parts by obtaining optimized parameters. The key problems concerned with the FEM simulation system, such as element election, boundary condition and friction are studied. A 3D rigid-plastic FEM simulation system is developed for the thin-walled tube NC bending process based on the above research. Moreover the stress distribution during the process with varied rotate velocity of the bend die is analyzed.

Key words: FEM simulation, NC bending process, Thin-walled tube