Abstract
In tube hydroforming the concurrent actions of pressurized fluid and mechanical feeding allows to obtain tube shapes characterized by complex geometries such as different diameters sections and/or bulged zones. the main process parameters are material feeding history (i.e. the punches velocity history) and internal pressure path during the process. What is crucial in such processes is the proper design of operative parameters aimed to avoid defects (for instance underfilling or ductile fractures). In this paper, the authors propose the results of a wide research project on hydroforming of aluminium alloy tubes based on the utilisation of different optimisation strategies and aimed to prevent the typical process defects (underfilling and bursting).