An investigation of plane-strain lateral extrusion to form components having staggered branches

摘要

The work outlined in this paper involves an experimental, upper-bound analysis, with an elasto-plasticfinite-element analysis of a plane-strain lateral extrusion process. Lead was used as the workpiecematerial so that a hot-working process could be simulated at room temperature. To obtain details ofthe deformation process as the material extrudes into the die branches, a square grid was scribed ontoone of the mating faces of a 'split' billet. The deformation of the grid was used in conjunction with thefinite-element results to select the most appropriate velocity fields for use in an upper-bound analysisof the process. The results predicted by the finite-element analysis and the upper-bound results basedon this analysis, compared very well with those obtained experimentally. It was found that thefinite-element results provided the most upper-bound values for the forging pressure ratio and the diebranch fill-out. Overall, the results show that both elasto-plastic finite-element analysis and theupper-bound method can be used with confidence to predict the important characteristics of aplane-strain lateral extrusion process.