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The 19th International Conference on Metal Forming (MF 2022) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1270 (2022) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1270/1/012023

Analysis of the properties and microstructure of ultra-thin

tube

J P Yan, R Zhao*, B Meng, M Wan and Z X Wang

School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191,
P.R.China

*Corresponding author, E-mail: buaazhaorui@163.com

Abstract. In order to satisfy the requirement of the engine heat exchangers, ultra-thin tubes with
higher dimensional accuracy and better performance are required. Inconel 718, as the basic
material of ultra-thin tube, is one of the materials that can meet the requirements of the engine
heat exchanger. In this study, ultra-thin tubes with diameters and thicknesses of 1.50mm and
0.050mm were prepared by floating plug drawing process. The results showed that the yield
strength increased and the corresponding elongation decreased with the increase of drawing
passes. The wall thickness of the ultra-thin tube can be controlled by floating plug drawing. And
the inner surface quality was greatly improved compared with the initial tube. The inner surface
roughness can be controlled below 1.7μm. The average grain size after drawing can be reduced
from 4.9μm to 2.1μm.

1. Introduction
With the continuous development of drawing forming technology and the demand of micro-forming
manufacturing, thin-walled tubes are developing towards the direction of ultra-fine and high-precision.
And their functions in medical, biological equipment, communication, measurement, and information
storage equipment have been improved. Metal thin-walled tubes can be used in various devices, such as
mechanical/structural components, biodegradable scaffolds [1], painless injections [2], laser
accelerators [3], fiber-optic contact probes, etc. Especially in the field of heat exchanger [4], higher
requirements are put forward in terms of pressure resistance, heat resistance and accuracy where extreme
sizes of thin-walled tubes are needed to improve heat exchange efficiency.
In drawing forming, the wall thickness of hollow sinking process is greatly affected by drawing speed,
and the wall thickness will be reduced when the drawing speed exceeds the threshold [5]. The floating
plug drawing needs to rely on the force balance established by its unique shape to stabilize in the die
hole, so that the tube blank can realize diameter reduction and wall reduction through the die hole.
Especially in the high-precision drawing, the floating plug drawing is beneficial to improve the drawing
productivity, yield and inner surface quality of the tube [6]. In previous experiments, the sensitivity of
drawing force and friction to die diameter has been studied. Rubio et al. [7] comprehensively used the
upper bound method, the slab method and finite element method to verify the geometric configuration
of different drawing models from the aspect of energy. This theory can minimize the power consumption
of tube extrusion and seek the range of the best die angle [8]. Pernis [9] chose to use the concept of
overlap ratio to describe the size relationship between the die and the plug. After establishing the
mechanical model of floating plug drawing, they thought that the diameter of the large end of the plug
can be smaller than the inner diameter of the die. Fafard et al. [10] improved the success rate of drawing
and reduced the deep drawing load by optimizing the die angle and the transient curvature between the
die bearing area and the inclined area. However, for thin-walled tubes, the diameter/thickness (D/t) ratio

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The 19th International Conference on Metal Forming (MF 2022) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1270 (2022) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1270/1/012023

is an extremely important parameter. Kuboki et al. [11] found that the floating plug drawing can reduce
the residual stress level while reducing the wall thickness. Supported by this view, there was a minimum
wall thickness reduction value in drawing, beyond which the residual stress strength was significantly
reduced. This view is more consistent with that of Yoshida [12], and it also further explains the influence
of D/t ratio on drawing forming, highlighting the importance of wall thickness reduction for formability.
After that, Fang [13] realized the drawing of 2.9mm × 0.27mm magnesium alloy thin-walled tubes by
drawing with the process of floating plug drawing. Li [14] used multi-pass deformation when preparing
AZ31 magnesium alloy thin-walled tubes of 4mm × 0.2mm, and obtained grains with an average grain
size of 8μm.
Therefore, this paper adopts the drawing method of floating plug drawing to prepare the ultra-thin tube
with smaller size on the basis of thin-walled tube. The material of ultra-thin tube is Inconel 718
superalloy. The variation law between wall thickness and grain size was analyzed in the research
forming process. Combined with the microstructure, the changes of mechanical properties were
analyzed, which provided a reference for the production of ultra-thin tubes and the optimization of
related process parameters.

2. Materials and Experimental Procedures

The Inconel 718 was used as the material of original tube with outer diameter of 2.00mm and wall
thickness of 0.07mm. Based on the floating plug drawing, the ultra-thin tube with diameter of 1.50mm
and wall thickness of 0.050mm was prepared by multi-pass cold deformation. The size of ultra-thin tube
after multi pass forming was shown in table 1. Among them, the ultra-thin tubes with diameters of
2.00mm, 1.73mm and 1.50mm are mainly used for analysis.
Table 1. Parameters of the ultra-thin tube.
Parameters(mm) Initial P1 P2 P3 P4

Outside diameters 2.00 1.85 1.73 1.61 1.50

Wall thickness 0.070 0.064 0.057 0.054 0.050
The equipment used in the drawing and forming of ultra-thin tube is a horizontal variable-speed drawing
machine independently developed by the research group, and the drawing speed ranges from 5mm/min
to 400mm/min. The mechanical property test is completed on the electronic universal tester (MTS
E44.204). Surface roughness tester (SRT) was used for analyzing the evolution of surface roughness. In
each test, ten sets of data for every specimen were measured and then averaged. The wall thickness of
ultra-thin tube was measured under optical microscope (OM). The microstructure of the material is
observed on the cross section of the ultra-thin tube. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis is
also carried out on the cross section of the tube to measure the crystal orientation and texture of the tube
sample on a JEOL-JSM-7001F field emission scanning electron microscope.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Mechanical property

The engineering stress-strain curves of the Inconel 718 ultra-thin tube were shown in figure 1. Under
the different drawing passes, the initial tube was compared with the ultra-thin tube with a diameter of
1.50mm in the final shape and the ultra-thin tube with a diameter of 1.73mm in the middle process. It
can be seen from the figure that the stress in the plastic deformation stage of the initial tube continued
to rise, while the curves after drawing with the floating plug were parallel to each other. This indicated
that the initial tube was greatly affected by work hardening. The ultra-thin tube after drawing had
undergone plastic deformation and can obtain greater elongation in the strengthening stage. Moreover,
with the increase of the passes, the increase of residual stress also increased the yield strength of the
tube. The tensile strength of the ultra-thin tube increased when the diameter of the ultra-thin tube was
1.5mm, while the elongation decreased.

2
The 19th International Conference on Metal Forming (MF 2022) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1270 (2022) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1270/1/012023

Figure 1. Engineering stress-strain curve in drawing forming.

3.2. Surface roughness

Surface roughness is an important factor affecting ultimate strain of materials [15]. The analysis of
measurement the surface roughness is the basis to ensure the quality of tube. Boutenel et al. [16] found
a functional relationship between the variation of tube wall thickness and D/t ratio in the process of
hollow sinking. When the D/t ratio of the tube is between 2.4 and 7.4%, the increment of wall thickness
was a main trend according to the process of hollow sinking. Therefore, the effect of the floating plug
drawing on the roughness is mainly concentrated on the inner surface of the ultra-thin tube. figure 2
showed the changes in wall thickness and surface roughness of the ultra-thin tube during the drawing.
It can be known that the wall thickness can be reduced to the required size according to the design
scheme under the drawing of the floating plug. Compared with the inner surface roughness of the ultra-
thin tube, it was found that the roughness of the initial tube was about 4.2μm. After the floating plug
process, the roughness of the inner surface decreased greatly and maintained below 1.7μm. Therefore,
the floating plug greatly improved the inner surface quality of the ultra-thin tube. With the realization
of multi-pass drawing process, the inner surface quality can be stabilized at a better level.

Figure 2. Variation of wall thickness and inner surface roughness of ultra-thin tube during drawing.

3.3. Grain size analysis

The grains of ultra-thin tube had a very obvious change after multi-pass deformation. Figure 3 showed
the microstructure morphology of the cross section of Inconel 718 ultra-thin tube by OM. Among them,
figure 3(a) showed the ultra-thin tube with a diameter of 1.5mm, the diameter of 1.73mm for figure 3(b)
and the initial tube for figure 3(c). It can be seen that the grain size of the initial tube was large. After
drawing deformation, the grain size decreased obviously. In order to obtain more accurate parameters,

3
The 19th International Conference on Metal Forming (MF 2022) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1270 (2022) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1270/1/012023

EBSD was used to accurately describe the grain variation. Through further analysis of the sample, the
grain size distribution diagram of Inconel 718 ultra-thin tube was shown as figure 4. According to the
proportion of tube grain size less than 4μm, the initial tube had only about 44.1%, and its average grain
size was 4.9μm. After drawing, the proportion of grain size less than 4μm of ultra-thin tubes with
diameters of 1.73mm and 1.50mm can reach 52.8% and 90.4%, and the average grain size was 3.6μm
and 2.1μm, respectively. The process of floating plug drawing was cold deformation without the energy
of recrystallization nucleation provided by temperature. The main source of energy for nucleation was
the plastic deformation of the ultra-thin tube during drawing.
The inverse pole figure (IPF) of the Inconel 718 ultra-thin tube was shown in figure 5. It can be observed
that the <101> texture was obvious in EBSD analysis of ultra-thin tubes, and the texture direction was
parallel to the drawing direction. The maximum texture density increased from 4.06 in the initial tube
to 4.95 in figure 5(b) and 5.86 in figure 5(a). The texture strength increased and the average grain size
decreased with the increase of drawing passes.

Figure 3. The cross section of Inconel 718 ultra-thin tube: (a) diameter 1.5mm; (b) diameter 1.73mm;
(c) Initial tube.

Figure 4. Grain size distribution of Inconel 718 ultra-thin tube: (a) diameter 1.5mm; (b) diameter
1.73mm; (c) Initial tube.

Figure 5. IPF of Inconel 718 ultra-thin tube: (a) diameter 1.5mm; (b) diameter 1.73mm; (c) Initial
tube.

3.4. Size effect

In order to describe the size effect, the concepts of average grain number along the wall thickness
direction and D/t ratio were introduced for interpretation, as shown in the table 2. Among them, the
number of grains along the wall thickness direction was the ratio of the wall thickness to the average
grain size. Combined with the analysis in figure 1, it can be seen that the drawing deformation of the

4
The 19th International Conference on Metal Forming (MF 2022) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1270 (2022) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1270/1/012023

floating plug process can greatly improve the strength and elongation of the material. With the increase
of passes, grain refinement directly affected the increase of ultra-thin tube strength, but the
corresponding elongation decreased. The change in grain size was described in section 3.3, which
explained the increase in ultra-thin tube strength. However, the number of grains along the wall
thickness direction increased rapidly after four passes of deformation, which was not consistent with the
slow increase of strength.
Table 2. Related parameters of the size effect.
Parameters Initial P2 P4

Average number of grains 14.29 15.78 23.86

D/t ratio 28.57 29.83 29.94
In the description of D/t ratio, the ratio increased with the increase of deformation passes. For the large
diameter metal tubes, it was a threshold value, which represented the safe area of material deformation.
However, for ultra-thin tube, the change of D/t ratio affected the material properties directly. The grain
size was much smaller than the macroscopic structure size when the material was deformed in
macroscopic size. When the ultrathin tube was deformed, the characteristic size of the material was in
the same order of magnitude as the grain size, and the effect of the grain in the deformation process was
amplified. With the continuous deformation of grains, intergranular dislocation slip increased gradually.
The size effect reduced the critical value of the fracture caused by defects. Therefore, grain refinement
improved the properties of materials. On the other hand, the residual stress increased with the multi-pass
deformation of the tube, and the fracture risk of the ultra-thin tube also increased.

4. Conclusion
In this paper, the ultra-thin tube with diameter of 1.50 mm and wall thickness of 0.050 mm was prepared
by cold deformation. The performance change of ultra-thin tube caused by size effect was explained by
analysing the stress-strain curves and microstructure. The conclusions as followed:
(1) With the increase of drawing passes, the yield strength increased. Due to the size effect, the
elongation decreased obviously and the fracture risk of ultra-thin tubes increased.
(2) The wall thickness of the ultra-thin tube can be controlled by floating plug drawing. And the inner
surface quality was greatly improved compared with the initial tube. The inner surface roughness can
be controlled below 1.7μm.
(3) The average grain size after drawing can be reduced from 4.9μm to 2.1μm. The maximum texture
density in the drawing direction increased from 4.06 in the initial tube to 5.86, and the texture strength
was increased.

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The 19th International Conference on Metal Forming (MF 2022) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1270 (2022) 012023 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1270/1/012023

[15] Al-Qureshi H A, Klein A N and Fredel M C 2005 J. Mater. Process. Tech. 170 204
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the financial support by the project (grant number 52105316
from NSFC), the project (Qingba from BeiHang University), and Jiangxi Research Institute of BeiHang
University.