Research On Rotary Forging Process Of Aluminum Alloy Wheel

As a kind of rotating component of automobiles,wheel is an important object researched in the technology field of automobile lightweight. Forging aluminum alloy wheel has been paid much attention and used widely in Japan and America because of its low-density, high-strength and good comprehensive mechanical property.Rotary forging process is a kind of advanced forging process applied to the continuous local forming of aluminum alloy wheel used in bus, heavy truck and limousine. Both numerical simulation and experimental study corresponding to forging aluminum alloy wheel were conducted in this paper.Gleeble-3500 thermal simulation machine was used to carry out one-dimension hot compression of 6061 aluminum alloy in this paper. The basic material data for numerical simulation of rotary forging process of aluminum alloy wheel was provided. The high temperature flow stress-strain curves of 6061 aluminum alloy were obtained. The influence of deformation temperature, strain rate on stress was analyzed. The stress value decreases with the rising of temperature and the decrease of strain rate.The constitutive equation was established for 6061 aluminum alloy based on an Arrhenius-type equation. Its activation energy Q is 163.4366KJ/mol. The processing map was calculated and analyzed according to dynamic materials mode(DMM). The suitable temperature section of 6061 aluminum alloy for hot working is 420-450℃.The numerical simulation orthogonal experiments research was conducted on the rotary forging process parameters of aluminum alloy wheels. A reasonable deformation temperature of the blank is 450℃. Based on shear friction theory, numerical simulation was conducted with different friction factors. 0.4 is the more reasonable friction factor for processing. The numerical simulation research of forming process was conducted on different die entrance fillet. 60 mm was selected as more reasonable die entrance filled with a comprehensive consideration of the allowable machining capacity in blank transition region.In order to make full use of the resource in the testing site and improve productivity, optimum scheme was put forward as blanking-upsetting-rotary forging. The optimum scheme was selected as the final process test scheme for forging aluminum alloy wheel after considering the quality of forging and forming efficiency comprehensively.According to the comparison between the numerical simulation of rotary forging process and the process experiments results of aluminum alloy wheel, the simulation module and the process parameters was proved to be right. This can provide theoretical guidance for the production practice of rotary forging process on aluminum alloy wheels.