3D flow analysis inside shear and streamlined extrusion dies for feeder plate design

The extrusion process is one of the commonly used metals forming processes. In this paper, shear dies with a feeder plate are analyzed using a 3D metal forming simulation package — MSC/SuperForge. This package uses the finite-volume analysis method. Twelve simulations using different die shapes (streamlined, shear and shear with feeder plate) for producing a complex shaped product — I-shape — were performed. The results indicated that shear dies with feeder plates can have the same flow characteristics and better surface finish as compared to streamlined dies, which are more difficult to design and manufacture for aluminum extrusions. It is shown that the MSC/SuperForge package using the finite-volume method provides results very close to those obtained from a validated analysis package. However, the simulation time using MSC/SuperForge was almost half the time consumed by the other package in performing identical simulations using the same computer. Moreover, the finite-volume technique used in MSC/SuperForge eliminates the remeshing problems that make simulating a metal-forming process with severe deformation, such as the extrusion process using a shear die, so difficult.