Simulation Of Compression-extrusion Coupling Forming Process Of Foam Aluminum Preform And Mold Design

Aluminum foam,which is a new type of multifunctional structure and functional material,has been extensive researched in recent years.Researchers in China and abroad had prepared many aluminum foam products with good properties by using different preparation methods.The Powder Compaction Melt foaming method(PCM method),still is the hot research direction of preparing aluminum foam due to the easily prepared shaped parts and composite structures.However,the research on the continuous production of aluminum foams by PCM method is not mature at present.In order to fulfill the production demand of large quantities in industry,Large-scale,continuous production process of aluminum foams still needs to be further studied.It is the key to compact and extrude the powder into a foamable preform among the continuous foam aluminum production with integrate production of mixing,compaction,hot extrusion,foaming,etc.It has carried out further research on the process of preparing the foamed aluminum formation by compression-extrusion coupling forming process in this work.The equal-diameter extrusion technology(ECAP deformation technology)widely used in large plastic deformation technology,which not only has good effects in refining grains,but also is gradually applied to powder materials consolidation.However,most of the current researches put the powder material into the jacket by ECAP deformation technology.The compression-extrusion coupling forming process of powder materials,has been researched by combining equal-angle extrusion with positive extrusion and composite mold structure of ECAP-FE in this paper.It can avoid the use of the jacket,and the results also provide the basis data for the preparation of aluminum foam production line.The two software,Unigraphics NX.8.0 three-dimensional modeling software and simulation software DEFORM,were used to simulate the process of ECAPFE solidified aluminum powder.The four factors were studied on formation of aluminum foam,such as the forming process,stress and strain,load and density.The results showed that bulk materials with high density have been deformed by ECAP-FE used the pure aluminum powders.Then different finite element models were established for different mold structure parameters,and the effects of mold and forming parameters on ECAP-FE consolidated powder were analyzed by equivalent strain,load size,compactness and strain non-uniformity coefficient.It is concluded that the extruded precursor had homogenous and dense structure in these die parameters during die angle of 45°,transition edge of 20 mm,and an extrusion ratio of 6.25.Finally,the design of ECAP-FE extrusion die was carried out by using the above mold parameters,which laid the foundation for the subsequent production test.