Method for Pocket Die Design on the Basis of Numerical Investigations of Aluminium Extrusion Process

A typical extrusion of low and medium strength aluminium alloys solid shapes is performed with flat pocket dies. The pocket allows realising the extrusion as “billet-to-billet” process, and also facilitates filling-up die channel deadlocks and thin-walled elements of profile [1]. In addition it serves as an instrument for shape geometry control. The scientific literature contains a variety of rules, formulas and methods for calculation of geometrical parameters of flat pocket dies design for extrusion of solid shapes of aluminium alloys [2 5]. However, a set of important die design parameters, such as bearing length [2, 3, 5], displacement of the channel from the centre of die [4], as displacement of median of the channel from median of pocket [2 5], etc. is often not taken into account, in general case it does not allow to calculate all necessary outcome values. Because of the above reason the goal of the paper is the development of a flat pocket die design method for aluminium alloys solid shapes extrusion. Thus in order to reach this aim it is necessary to find the quantitative dependence between extrusion tool geometry and deforming parameters. Recently FEM simulations were used for solving similar problems [5, 6].