Thin-Plate Forming by Thixo- and Rheoforging

Thin plates with a thickness of 1.2 mm are fabricated using two processes, thixoforging and rheoforging, which are semisolid forming techniques. The die design, formability, microstructure, and mechanical properties of the fabricated thin plates are analysed. A fan-shaped gate is designed by analysing the filling behaviour using semisolid material, and uniform filling behaviour of material is obtained by arranging nine overflows in product area. semisolid metal is prepared through a semisolid process in which reheating, a thixoprocess, and cooling with stirring, a rheoprocess, are applied. The semisolid material is injected into a forging die and is formed into thin plate at a punch speed of 300 mm/s and under a pressure of 100 MPa. Since semisolid material with a solid fraction below 45% has mainly small primary alpha-Al particles, the formability of the thin plate is improved. The formed thin plate also has good mechanical properties since the small and globular grains are evenly distributed. The thin plate formed from semisolid material with a solid fraction above 50% has poor mechanical properties owing to the large quantity of coarse primary alpha-Al particles. A rheoforged thin plate exhibits poorer mechanical properties than a thixoforged thin plate, but rheoforging produces a more precise thin plate.