Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130–131 (2002) 47–53

Study on the forming parameters of the metal bellows

S.W. Lee*
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Soonchunhyang University,
Asan, Chungnam 336-745, South Korea

Abstract

The manufacturing process of the metal bellows consists of the four main forming processes: deep drawing, ironing, tube-bulging and
folding. The tube-bulging and folding processes are critically important because the quality of the metal bellows is greatly influenced by the
forming conditions of these processes. Also, the final convolution shape of the bellows is determined just after the springback stage.
There are many forming factors pertinent to the overall process of the metal bellows. The representatives are the wall thickness of the pre-
form tube, the pressure applied during the tube-bulging and the die stroke for the folding stage.
In this paper, a finite element analysis technique is applied to the tube-bulging and folding processes as well as the springback stage. The
explicit time integration method is used for analyzing the tube-bulging and folding processes. Meanwhile, the implicit time integration
method is used for the springback stage. Combination of these two different time integration methods is widely accepted for simulating the
forming and springback stages consecutively.
In addition to the FE simulation, effects of the representative forming factors mentioned above are examined by using the Taguchi method.
From the factor study, the most important factor influencing the final shape of convolution of the metal bellows is found out. The results of the
present study could be used as a basis of designing a new type of the metal bellows.
# 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Bellows; Tube-bulging; Folding; Springback; FEM; Taguchi method

1. Introduction internal oil pressure P is maintained constant, the axial

The metal bellows used commonly for controlling the
temperature of refrigerator or air-conditioner is manufac-
tured by the four consecutive processes depicted in Fig. 1. A
circular blank is deformed into the cup by the deep drawing
process, which is followed by the several ironing processes
to obtain the pre-form of metal bellows. After these pro-
cesses, the pre-form of metal bellows is fully annealed in
order to get rid of the residual stress. The convolution
forming process which is composed of the two continuous
steps of the tube-bulging and the folding is applied to the
annealed pre-form to complete the manufacturing process of
the metal bellows [1].
At the tube-bulging process, the equally spaced circular
plate dies are set to surround the wall of the pre-form and
the internal oil pressure P increases up to a proper value. At
the contact parts constrained by the plate dies the pre-form
is locked to deform so that the bulged tube with many small
convolutions is obtained. At the folding process, while the
*
Tel.: þ82-41-530-1356; fax: þ82-41-530-1550.
E-mail address: swlee@sch.ac.kr (S.W. Lee).
force is applied along the longitudinal direction of the
bulged tube in order to complete the final shape of the metal
bellows. Finally, the oil pressure and the axial force are
completely removed. It causes the springback which
occurs due to the redistribution of the internal stress in
the folded tube.
Most of recent research works for the metal bellows
have focused to analyze the characteristics of the bellows
product itself like stress, vibration, fatigue fracture or buck-
ling [2–4]. There have been a few related works, however,
for analyzing the tube-bulging process using the FEM or
UBET, etc. [5,6]. The analysis for the folding process can
be found in [1] where the UBET method is applied. The
consistent analysis for the whole process including spring-
back for the metal bellows has not been tried so far.
In the present work, the latter half processes including the
tube-bulging, folding and springback are analyzed consis-
tently using the FEM. Some of the results are briefly
presented. Additionally the representative factors pertinent
to the manufacturing of the metal bellows are selected to
examine which factors are significant. For the factor study, a
proper Taguchi table is adopted and numerical experimenta-
tions are carried out. Some statistical methods are applied to

0924-0136/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 4 - 0 1 3 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 7 8 7 - 2
48 S.W. Lee / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130–131 (2002) 47–53

Fig. 1. Illustration of the overall metal bellows forming process.

the obtained data to measure the degree of effects of the
factors.
2. Modeling
A schematic view of the tube-bulging, folding and spring-
back processes is represented in Fig. 2 in which the half of
one convolution of the metal bellows is modeled considering
the symmetry. The symmetric point located on the radial
direction is called the ‘crown’ point, whereas the point
restricted to expand by the plate die (the thick black line)
is denoted the ‘inner point’.
At the tube-bulging process, the oil pressure increases
linearly from P0 to Pf while the plate die stays at the initial
position. Meanwhile, at the folding process the plate die
goes down at the constant velocity v while the oil pressure is
maintained at Pf. Fig. 3 shows the time schedule of the finite
element analysis in detail.
For finite element analysis PAM-STAMP, one of com-
mercial codes based on the explicit finite element formula-
tion, is used. Thus the tube-bulging and folding processes
are analyzed by the explicit time integration method mean-
while the analysis of the springback stage is done by the
implicit time integration method. The element type used in
the analysis is the normal anisotropic elastoplastic shell
element. In order to enhance the accuracy of springback
result seven integration points are set through the thickness
direction of the shell element. The material properties and
the process parameters are listed in Table 1.
 S.W. Lee / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130–131 (2002) 47–53 49

Table 1
Process parameters and material properties used for the finite element
simulation

Process parameter Value

Plate die velocity (v) 0.1 mm/ms

Maximum die stroke ðh0  hf Þ 2 mm
Maximum pressure (Pf) 10.98 MPa
Initial blank radius (r0) 4.5 mm
Initial blank height (h0) 3 mm
Initial blank thickness (t0) 0.1 mm
Material Phosphor bronze (full annealed)
Young’s modulus (E) 92 Gpa
Poisson’s ratio (n) 0.34
Lankford value (R) 1.0
Density (r) 8.5  106 kg/mm3
Stress–strain curve  ¼ 0:6362e0:2341 GPa
s

4. Assessment of manufacturing factors

Although there are many factors influencing the quality of

the metal bellows like material used, wall thickness, radius
of the pre-form tube, pitch of the plate die, etc. three major
factors are chosen in this study, which are the wall thickness
of the pre-form, the internal pressure and the stroke of the
plate die. It will be revealed next whether the above factors
are selected appropriately or not.
To evaluate these factors, three levels are chosen for each
factor as follows. These levels are determined by 5%
around the middle value:
(i) Wall thickness (mm): 0.095, 0.1, 0.105.
(ii) Internal pressure (MPa): 10.43, 10.98, 11.52.
(iii) Die stroke (mm): 1.9, 2.0, 2.1.
If the assumption that some high order interactions among
the three factors are negligible is introduced, the information
on the main effects and low order interactions can be
obtained by running only a fraction of the complete factorial
Fig. 2. Analysis modeling used for the finite element simulation. experiment [7]. As a fractional factorial design, the ortho-
gonal tables, so called Taguchi tables, are widely used in the
field of engineering. The appropriate Taguchi table for
3. Analysis results arranging the above three factors with three levels for each
is L9(34). Table 2 shows the L9 Taguchi table in which the
Fig. 4 shows the deformed configurations for each pro-
cess, tube-bulging, folding and springback. Compared with
Table 2
the initial radius of the pre-form tube, the radius of the crown Experimental layout of the L9 Taguchi table and the obtained data
point increases to 111.7% in tube-bulging and up to 152.7%
Run Thickness Pressure Stroke (Ddc/r0)fold (Ddc/r0)spg (Ddi/h0)spg
in the folding stage. At the springback stage, it shrinks down
(mm) (MPa) (mm)
to 151.7% due to the elastic recovery. On the contrary, the
amount of height change of the inner point is about 5% 1 0.095 10.43 1.9 0.52146 0.00997 0.03877
during the springback stage. 2 0.095 10.98 2 0.52639 0.01013 0.04339
3 0.095 11.52 2.1 0.55366 0.01094 0.06790
Normalized displacement of the crown point along the 4 0.1 10.43 2 0.51306 0.01003 0.05093
process time can be seen in Fig. 5. At the tube-bulging stage 5 0.1 10.98 2.1 0.54103 0.01079 0.05576
where the internal pressure acts as the only external load the 6 0.1 11.52 1.9 0.52334 0.01013 0.05576
radius of the crown point increases logarithmically as the 7 0.105 10.43 2.1 0.52834 0.01005 0.04109
internal pressure increases. At the folding stage the crown 8 0.105 10.98 1.9 0.49743 0.00962 0.04082
9 0.105 11.52 2 0.51616 0.01008 0.05396
point moves almost linearly at a ratio of 1.43%/ms.
50 S.W. Lee / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130–131 (2002) 47–53

Fig. 3. Time schedule for the external loads in the simulation of the metal bellows forming process.

Fig. 4. Comparison of the deformed configuration at the end of each process stage.
 S.W. Lee / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130–131 (2002) 47–53 51

Fig. 5. Normalized displacement of the crown point along the process time.

nine runs are carried out to investigate the effects of the three folding or springback stage and Ddi means the displacement
factors. The numerical results of the nine runs are filled in the of the inner point during the springback stage. Ddc and Ddi are
columns named (Ddc/r0)fold, (Ddc/r0)spg and (Ddi/h0)spg, where divided by the initial radius r0 and the initial height h0 of the
Ddc means the displacement of the crown point during the pre-form tube, respectively, in order to normalize them.

Table 3
Results of ANOVA for: (a) (Ddc/r0)fold, (b) (Ddc/r0)spg and (c) (Ddi/h0)spg

Source of variation Sum of squares (%) DOF Mean square F0 Pr > F0

(Ddc/r0)fold
Model 2.041E03 (97.85) 6 3.402E04 15.145 0.063
Thickness 5.987E04 (28.70) 2 2.994E04 13.329 0.070
Pressure 1.915E04 (9.18) 2 9.577E05 4.264 0.190
Stroke 1.251E03 (59.96) 2 6.253E04 27.842 0.035
Error 4.492E05 (2.15) 2 2.246E05
Total 2.086E03 (100.00) 8
(Ddc/r0)spg
Model 1.316E06 (96.47) 6 2.194E07 9.102 0.102
Thickness 3.466E07 (25.40) 2 1.733E07 7.188 0.122
Pressure 2.009E07 (14.72) 2 1.005E07 4.168 0.194
Stroke 7.689E07 (56.35) 2 3.844E07 15.949 0.059
Error 4.821E08 (3.53) 2 2.411E08
Total 1.365E06 (100.00) 8
(Ddi/h0)spg
Model 6.734E04 (91.40) 6 1.122E04 3.544 0.236
Thickness 1.180E04 (16.01) 2 5.899E05 1.863 0.349
Pressure 4.107E04 (55.75) 2 2.054E04 6.485 0.134
Stroke 1.447E04 (19.64) 2 7.236E05 2.285 0.304
Error 6.334E05 (8.60) 2 3.167E05
Total 7.368E04 (100.00) 8
52 S.W. Lee / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130–131 (2002) 47–53

Fig. 6. Average response curves of (Ddc/r0)fold according to the three levels of each factor.

Fig. 7. Average response curves of (Ddc/r0)spg according to the three levels of each factor.

The analysis of variance (ANOVA) about (Ddc/r0)fold,
(Ddc/r0)spg and (Ddi/h0)spg are carried out in order to mea-
sure the degree of effects of the factors quantitatively. The
results of ANOVA are represented in Table 3. In all the
ANOVA tables, the model is shown to have contribution
explaining above 91% of the total variation. The F-test on
the model tells that the model is significant for explaining
the displacement of the crown point during both the folding
and springback stages at the significance level of 0.1. This
means that the three major factors chosen are turned out to
be well selected. In case of the displacement of the inner
point, however, the model is significant at the significance
level of about 0.2 meaning that there is a possibility to exist
another factor influencing the movement of the inner point
during the springback stage. This task is left for the future
work.
Based on the ANOVA results, the descending order of
strong factor can be determined as follows:
(i) For (Ddc/r0)fold and (Ddc/r0)spg,
die stroke ! wall thickness ! internal pressure
(ii) For (Ddi/h0)spg,
internal pressure ! die stroke ! wall thickness
 S.W. Lee / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130–131 (2002) 47–53
Fig. 8. Average response curves of (Ddi/r0)spg according to the three levels of each factor.
In overall view, the factor of die stroke can be considered
to be the most influencing factor on determining the final
convolution shape of the metal bellows.
Figs. 6–8 show the average response curves of (Ddc/r0)fold,
(Ddc/r0)spg and (Ddi/h0)spg, respectively according to the
levels of the three factors. In Fig. 6 the displacement of
the crown point at the folding stage can be seen to increase
much rapidly as the die stroke increases compared with the
other two factors. The same phenomenon can also be seen in
Fig. 7. These verify again the fact that the die stroke is the
most influencing factor. In Fig. 8 the average response curve
of the amount of springback of the inner point according to
the wall thickness variation is shown to have a local max-
imum point around the designed wall thickness. Because the
springback of the inner point along the height direction of
the bellows is considered to have much relation with the
spring coefficient of the product, more detailed analysis
about this is needed in the future.
5. Conclusions
From the results of the finite element analysis and the
factor study using the Taguchi method, some useful con-
clusions can be led as follows:
(i) The radius of the crown point increases logarithmically
as the internal pressure increases at the tube-bulging
stage. Meanwhile, the crown point moves almost
linearly at the folding stage.
(ii) The amount of springback of the inner point along the
height direction is much more than that of the crown
point along the radial direction.
53
(iii) The statistical model composed of the three factors,
die stroke, wall thickness and internal pressure, is
significant at the significance level of 0.1 for
explaining the displacement of the crown.
(iv) The factor of die stroke among the three factors is the
most influencing one on determining the final
convolution shape of the metal bellows.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Pacific Controls Co.
Ltd. for the provision of valuable information and product
data.
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