Industrial application of numerical models for aluminium extrusion

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development and application of numerical models to simulate aluminium extrusion processes, highlighting their benefits for industrial profile manufacturing and collaboration with industry partners.

Contribution

It introduces specific numerical models for aluminium extrusion simulation and demonstrates their practical application in an industrial context.

Findings

Successful simulation of large viscoplastic deformations during extrusion

Improved understanding of numerical challenges in modelling extrusion processes

Enhanced collaboration between academia and industry for die manufacturing

Abstract

This study presents the numerical models used for the simulation of the large viscoplastic deformations that aluminium undergoes during the extrusion process in order to obtain industrial profiles. This study also gives examples of results obtained by the Computational Fluid Dynamics Group of the UNLP Faculty of Engineering, in collaboration with the company Madexa S.A., dedicated to the manufacturing of dies for this type of processes. The equations that model the process, the difficulties associated with its numerical resolution and the advantages that the simulation work represent for the company are also presented in this study.