Study of Flow Balance and Temperature Evolution over Multiple Aluminum Extrusion Press Cycles with HyperXtrude 9.0

Abstract

In this research, transient finite element simulations of the aluminum extrusion process have been performed in order to study how process parameters influence flow balance and exit temperature. This has been achieved by investigating the influence of billet taper, front billet temperature and ram speed on the run-out velocity and temperature of two separate outlets. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been employed to study the effect of each parameter on the velocity and temperature variation of the extruded section. Results show that increasing each of these three parameters results in an undesired increase in exit velocity and temperature. The front billet temperature is found to be the most significant factor affecting the variation. The finite elements software used was Altair HyperXtrude 9.0.