EFFECT OF CHANNEL ANGLE AND FRICTION IN MODIFIED ECAPCONFORM PROCESS OF Al-6061: A NUMERICAL STUDY

Equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) combined with the Conform process provides a solution for the continuous production of ultrafine-grained materials. In the present study finite element method was executed to investigate the effects of die channel angle and friction on the strain homogeneity and the required torque in ECAPConform process. Deformation behavior of Al 6061 wires was analyzed using the ABAQUS/Explicit software. A number of Finite element simulations considering different channel angles (90?, 100? and 110?) and various friction conditions of 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 were surveyed. The results revealed two distinct trends in which by increasing the channel angle among 90? to 110?, the amount of induced plastic strain into the initial wire is reduced about 40% and required processing torque is decreased about 50%. In addition, more homogeneity was observed in higher angle values. The results regarding to equivalent strain, obtained from FE analyses, show a good agreement with previous studies. Eventually, the FE results indicate that plastic strains and required torque for a successful processing increased about 8% and 12% when the friction coefficient raises between (0.2-0.4).