Metal forming of tubes and sheets with liquid and other flexible media

Abstract Due to the increasing pollution of our environment, the legal demands are getting stricter. Especially the automobile industry needs new production methods for cars with reduced pollutants without a significant cost increase. To solve this problem, the car producers started to design cars with integrated lightweight structures, in order to reduce the total weight of the cars. This weight reduction can be realized by using new materials, new manufacturing methods or the modification of well-known manufacturing methods. The metal forming with flexible media is one of these new technologies. Especially the section of metal forming with liquids, also called hydroforming, has gained an important position among the traditional manufacturing methods. This keynote paper provides an overview of this technology and shows the recent developments especially for the internal high pressure forming, which is a subgroup of hydroforming.