Experimental and numerical study of energy consumption in forward and backward rod extrusion

The primary concern in any metal forming operation is to produce the desired product with maximum die life and minimum die wear. These requirements are achieved when the required load and energy is minimised. In this paper, the extrusion energy is determined for the two optimal conical and curved dies, for aluminum and lead billets, in forward and backward extrusion, using FEM and by performing experiments. It is illustrated that the energy required to deform aluminum and lead billets in the optimum curved die is considerably less than that in the optimum conical die.