3-D FEM Simulation of Aluminum Extrusion

An Al 6061 precision small rail is used as the research target for both FE Analysis and experiment. The compression tests are done to obtain the material database and apply to FEM. Three formulations, including Transient updated Lagrangian (UL) formulation, Steady state Eulerian (SS) approach, and ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian) approach, are applied with the material database to study analytical results of extrusion processes, and are compared with the actual experiment which is done through 350 US Ton direct extrusion press. The parameters such as extrusion load, temperature, ram speed, strain stress, etc are compared. The results of simulations show that the predicted load correlates well with the loads obtained from the extrusion experiments. This good correlation between simulated and experimental loads shows the importance of using accurate material database like the flow stress input data. The advantages of FEM technique in accurately predicting extrusion loads and deformed extrudate have been demonstrated and validated by an industrial extrusion example. We could also think about the future effort, like more validations, user friendliness, computational efficiency, and coupling of micro-structure and thermal-mechanical models.