Numerical simulation applications of aluminum extrusion engineering based on rigid-plastic finite element method

Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) methods are becoming more and more important for the modern industry. However, the applications in the extrusion industry are still limited because of the contradition between the slow simulation speed and the fast die delivery requirement. This paper presents a new fast simplified method for analyzing the exit velocity field of aluminum extrusion. Rigid-plastic finite element method is employed with zero displacement boundary conditions and friction boundary conditions to meet the specific requirement of the aluminum extrusion die industry. The computational time of the proposed method is only a few hours. In the applications, the simulated results fit the experiments and the theoretical solution very well, which demonstrates the efficiency and versatility of the method.