Research On Key Technologies Of Aluminum Alloy Profile Steady Extrusion Process Numerical Simulation Based On Finite Volume Method

In comparision with other metal materials, aluminum alloy has a number of merits, such as light self-weight, high toughness, good-looking appearance, corrosion proofing, high plasticity and so on. Therefore, aluminum alloy profiles are widely used in national economy, military, health care, aerospace and so on. Meanwhile, there is a trend of great size, thin wall and complication in aluminum alloy profile. At present, aluminum alloy profile die is mainly dependent on the designers’ experience and engineering analogy methods. As a result, this increases the number of the die testing and repairing, decreases the design efficiency, enlarges the design cost, diminishes the die’s accuracy, etc. There is a gap between the high development of aluminum alloy profile and the low level of extrusion die design. Moreover, there are few mature exclusive aluminum alloy profile extrusion process simulation softwares in China. So, it is imperative to develop a more accurate and efficient aluminum alloy profile extrusion process simulation software with self-owned intellectual property rights.So far, there are mainly two approaches applied to aluminum alloy profile extrusion process simulation, which are FEM(finite element method) and FVM(finite volume method). When used to solve the severe plastic deformation cases, like aluminum alloy profile extrusion process, there are various problems in FEM. For example, grid remeshing frequently emerges and the material’s welding in profile extrusion process can not be accurately simulated. Because FVM is able to solve these problems and can calculate irregular complex domain effectively as well as adopt parallel computing, it is widely applied to the simulation of aluminum alloy profile extrusion process. Besides, present system can not simulate aluminum alloy profile extrusion process accurately and efficiently, and it should be improved in terms of steady extrusion process simulation, bearing length self-optimization, profile deformation simulation and so on. So, in this paper, the key technology of aluminum alloy profile extrusion process simulation is studied carefully, which is based on FVM.The mass conservation equations, momentum conservation equations and energy conservation equations are studied and aluminum alloy profile steady extrusion process is successfully simulated in this paper. The application of profile friction boundary conditions is researched, and an approach for recognition of extrusion bearing in the simulation system and basic steps of bearing length optimization are brought forward, which ultimately leads to the bearing length self-optimization. Through the introduction of symmetric boundary conditions, the simulation time of symmetric aluminum alloy profile extrusion process is shortened. By use of present VOF method and relative displacement method with self-owned intellectual property rights, a cross-shaped profile extrusion process is simulated respectively, and the results are well consistent with the theoretical analysis and the results from other software. And finally AE_FVM can simulate the aluminum alloy profile deformation in the steady extrusion process.Based on the existing research findings, an aluminum alloy profile steady extrusion process simulation system is developed successfully, and the accuracy of the system is verified as well as material flow regulation is studied in this paper.