New strategies for optimal control of command laws for tube hydroforming processes.

The paper is concerned with the comparison of optimization methods (OM) and control algorithms (CA) and their applications in tube hydroforming. Two sensitivity methods, the finite differentiation method and the direct differentiation method are also compared for the computation of the gradient of the objective functions in the case of optimization method. The results demonstrate that both methods could be applied for hydroforming optimization and control, but it is clearly demonstrated that control algorithms lead to better results in terms of accuracy and computational time than optimization methods. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]