Hot stretch forming of titanium sheet by resistance heating

Titanium alloys are important aerospace materials due to excellent comprehensive performance, but it is difficult to form at room temperature. Electrically assisted hot stretch forming is used to form the titanium panels of aircraft. This paper studies the effect of temperature, strain, stress relaxation time and cooling rate on forming accuracy by stress relaxation test, tensile test and forming experiment. It is shown that for the influence of temperature on forming accuracy, there is no large difference among 773K, 873K, 973K. And with increase of strain, the forming accuracy becomes lower. For the influence of stress relaxation time, there is no large difference among 0min, 15mins, 30mins. And with decrease of cooling rate, the forming accuracy is improved significantly. It’s concluded that when the temperature reaches a high level, temperature and stress relaxation time have no great influence on forming accuracy. And the forming accuracy is mainly influenced by strain and cooling rate. Electrically assisted hot stretch forming is an effective method to form titanium alloy. And the part with high forming accuracy can be obtained by adopting high temperature, low strain, proper stress relaxation time and low cooling rate.