A note on “Barrel Compression Test”: A method for evaluation of friction

Friction plays an important role in metal forming operations. Therefore, many techniques are developed for evaluation of friction in large deformation processes. Among them the “Barrel Compression Test” (BCT) is a very simple method that quantitatively evaluates the constant friction factor, m, simply by compressing a cylindrical specimen. BCT was analyzed by Avitzur [B. Avitzur, Metal Forming Processes and Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1968] using the upper bound theory. Ebrahimi et al. [R. Ebrahimi, A. Najafizadeh, J. Mater. Process. Technol. 152 (2004) 136–143] suggested a method in order to make Avitzur’s mathematical results applicable. However, they made an assumption in their work which results in some miscalculations. In this note their mathematical analysis is corrected and also the method is modified.