Aluminum alloy is widely used in automobile parts because of its light weight and good process performance. In view of the complex structure of aluminum alloy automobile rear upper control arms, multiple forming processes and the difficulty in quality control, in this paper, we propose a rolling-forging composite process to produce a rear upper control arm. Based on the reasonable volume distribution of the blank by cross-wedge rolling, multi-step forging was carried out. Finite element simulation of thermomechanically coupled multi-step forming was carried out using DEFORM software. Based on a comparison of the traditional process and the proposed rolling-forging composite forming process, we concluded that the rolling-forging composite process can greatly reduce the material cost and the forming force, resulting in superior product performance. The coarse-grain structure of products at different process temperatures was analyzed by a crystal-phase experiment. The results show that the process temperature of the multi-step process, as well as the heat treatment temperature and time have an important influence on the coarse-grain structure of the product. The optimal preheating temperatures for preforging and final forging dies were determined to be 335 °C and 350 °C, respectively; a preheating temperature of 530 °C and a solution time of 45 min resulted in the least coarse-grain surface structure. The research results provide a theoretical basis for improving the multi-step forming quality of automobile rear upper control arms.
Keywords: multi-step; quality control; rear upper control arm; rolling-forging composite forming process.