Evaluation of the effect of ram speed for extrusion of Al6063 based on ALE-based finite element analysis of L-shaped sample

Abstract During extrusion processes of aluminium alloy, the material generally experiences not only severe plastic deformation but also large variations of temperature, and strain rate, which is directly associated with the level of flow stress. It is, therefore, of great importance to consider the mutual effects between the process parameters for the targeted extrusion and the strain rate-, and temperature-dependent material hardening behaviour for a trustworthy description of the material extrusion via numerical analysis. In order to appropriately deal with the large deformation of the material, an Arbitrary Lagrangian‒Eulerian (ALE) method was used in this study for the extrusion analysis considering hardening responses of Al6063 alloy in the broad range of strain rate and temperature that the material will experience during the extrusion. Comparisons between the simulation and experimental results reveal that the numerical analysis based on an ALE method has the strong potential to predict the material deformation behaviour during the extrusion, which will give useful insight for setting up initial values of process parameters prior to the actual production.