Bending of thin-walled tubes

Abstract

This study investigates the behaviour of thin-walled tubes under pure bending. A four point bending test rig was designed and fabricated to carry out four point bending experiments on thin-walled tubes of different materials. The materials used for the thin-walled tubes were aluminium and mild steel. The experiments were carried out using an Instron Universal Testing Machine which applied an increasing load to the tubes until deformation.

The results showed that the tubes failed due to yield. Not only that, mild steel tubes were able to take in a larger applied load and had a greater bending moment as compared to aluminium tubes. The deflection behaviour of both sets of tubes were observed to be similar. Additionally, the experimental results were compared with theoretical values. The difference between the values was attributed to a possible misalignment issue which occurred during the bending procedure. The results of this study have significant implications on the use of thin-walled tubes in engineering applications.