A survey on the predictability of the die deflection in aluminum extrusion by means of experimental investigation and numerical analysis

The direction of the market demand in extrusion is to push towards higher quality products. With this aim, is it nowadays a common practice to make use of numerical methods, especially of the finite element simulations in order to get information on the material flow, temperature distribution, process load and other process related issues. Therefore, in parallel to the requirement of higher quality products there is the demand of more accurate, stable and reliable simulation codes. The International Conference on Extrusion and Benchmark (ICEB) works as a meeting point between finite element codes developers and extruders and die makers to asses and compare the capability of each code to predict the parameters of interest in the field of extrusion. The 2009 edition of the conference has been focused on the die deflection evaluation, also accounting for the experimental complexity to monitor this data for the high temperature involved in the process as well as for the reduced direct accessibility to the die. Aim of the present work is to present the results of this activity in which a controlled extrusion experiment has been carried out and to compare the recorded data with the prediction of three process simulations codes in terms of profiles exit velocity and temperature, die temperature, process load and die deflection in the extrusion direction. The codes are based on different approaches: ALTAIR HyperXtrude® based on the Arbitrarian Lagrangian Eulerian formulation, COMSOL® Multiphysics based on a pure Eulerian approach and finally DEFORM 3D based on a pure Lagrangian approach.