A parametric FEM analysis of extrusion using a personal computer

The authors describe a FEM numerical method for the metal-working simulation of extrusion. A parametric procedure for the pre-processing has been set-up to modelize the behaviour of the processed material for different conditions of the dimensions and shapes of the extrusion dies. The processing section utilizes the ansys FEM commercial code, under the plasticity hypothesis of von Mises, considering a stationary bi-dimensional metal flow and the material as perfectly rigid-plastic. The post-processing phase has been developed integrating the capabilities of the commercial code with other routines written to obtain all the information on the stress-strain state of the processed material. The proposed method allows the rapid analysis of different metal-working choices and configurations without the necessity of more complex codes and more powerful and expensive computing devices in the preliminary design.