Microstructure and crystallographic texture evolution of austenitic stainless steel tubes, deformed through hydroforming

Tube forming is carried out to produce hollow shaped components using tubular blanks. These components find extensive application in automobile and aerospace engineering. In this work TIG welded tubes of austenitic stainless steel (304) of different lengths, deformed into bulge shape using hydraulic press with the help of water intensifier system and tube bulging setup. Microstructure, texture evolved on deformed tube as a function of boundary conditions like axial feed, fixed end, was estimated by charactering tools like scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction technique (XRD). These microstructure features correlated for different boundary condition of deformed tubes, then concluded that boundary condition used for deformation have significant influence on evolution of microstructure features. Key words: Austenitic stainless steel, Hydroforming, Microstructure, Bulk texture

He is Dr.krishnam Raju, a Ph.D. graduate from IIT Bombay, with specialization in Mechanical Metallurgy. He has 30 years of experience in teaching, research, and industry. His areas of research includes tube hydroforming and texture evolution, Tailor weld blank forming and texture evolution, plane sheet forming through deep drawing and texture evolution and cryogenic forming of austenitic stainless steel sheets.