The most common technique of superplastic forming is the blow forming of a sheet onto a female die by utilizing pressurized gas. Very limited studies have been reported on the superplastic forming of tubular shapes. In this work, a comprehensive study that includes Finite Element (FE) simulations and experiments is carried out to investigate the superplastic forming process of tubular shapes. An axisymmetric FE model, which uses experimentally calibrated microstructure-based equations that take damage evolution and grain growth into account, for the Magnesium alloy AZ31 is used to simulate the process. Forming pressure schedules for different tubular shapes are devised using FE simulations based on different strain rate control schemes. An experimental setup for the superplastic forming of tubular shapes that utilizes contact sensors is also designed and built. A number of experiments are then conducted based on the devised FE pressure profiles schedules. A comparison between the FE results and experiments for different variables like the forming time and thickness distribution is presented.
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