Analyzing the Tribological Phenomena in Hot Extrusion Processes by using New Torsion-Tribo Test

Pavel Hora,1 Maysam Gorji,1 Joachim Maier,2 ETH Zurich,1 Institute of Virtual Manufacturing, Zurich, Switzerland WEFA Singen GmbH,2 Singen, Germany

ABSTRACT -- During the extrusion processes, very complex adhesion and friction effects between the die surface and the extruded material occur. They have a strong influence on the velocity distribution in the profile, as well as on the life-term behavior of the tools. In the framework of this study, a recently developed experiment called the Torsion-Tribo test will be presented. The test allows the investigation of low- and high-pressure load cases. The experimental layout of the test tools and specimen, the evaluation method, as well as measurements for different coatings will also be presented. The experimental data enable the investigation of the friction due to contact pressure, rotational velocity, and temperature. Those data are used to determine the parameters of an advanced friction model. A NEW EXPERIMENTAL MODEL
One of the oldest problems in physics and certainly one of the most important influences from a practical point of view is friction. Extrusion processes are especially very sensitive to frictional effects. If they cannot be controlled, the process cannot be controlled either. Frictional forces have to be reasonably evaluated in the simulation of forming processes. Highly-sensitive frictional effects in extrusion processes were analyzed by the multi-hole die extrusion experiments of the IVP benchmark.[1, 2, 3] It is possible to develop tools that allow a significant influence of parameters such as position of holes, cross-section area, and length of bearings. The type of tools designed for this purpose and extruded material are shown in Figure 1.

Cross-section area

Cross-section position

Friction Length

Figure1. Multi-Hole Extrusion, considering the influence of geometry. Benchmark Extrusion Zurich, 2005. Cooperators: SPZ-TU Berlin & WEFA test die 1.15.[1, 2, 3] In the past decades, different experimental methods were presented to investigate the friction phenomena by considering various testing conditions. Pin-on-disc, block-on-cylinder, and rotating-disc measurements are some of the important experimental setups discussed in the literature.[4, 5, 6, 7]

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The disadvantage of these tests is their completely different contact compared to the real case. In extrusion processes the contact surface between the billet and the tooling is not small. Therefore none of the mentioned experimental setups are representative of the frictional phenomena in aluminum extrusion. Also, in the extrusion process, the most important parameters which influence the frictional properties of the bodies in contact are temperature, pressure and the relative velocity. For these reasons, the methods allow only a qualitative prediction of the real behavior. To investigate the friction behavior in extrusion processes, a new friction test setup has been developed, which enables the investigation of the influence of the mentioned quantities on the frictional behavior of the material. As it is shown in Figure 2 (left), the setup uses a torsion machine as the testing facility, and this enables performing of experiments at different temperatures, angular velocities, and axial forces.

Figure 2. Torsion testing machine, (left); schematic view of experimental setup (right); also, tools and the specimens for the cylindrical test. The specimen placed between two tools was heated up by inductive heating to the test temperature, for example T = 400C within 60 seconds, and afterward the temperature was kept constant for 120 seconds. The temperature of the specimen is controlled using a thermocouple which is spot welded on the surface of the tool 1, Figure2 (right). This assembly is axially and rotationally loaded on the torsion testing machine at specific temperatures, so the specimen undergoes a plastic deformation under thermal-mechanical conditions. The required torque is then measured during the whole test by the torsion machine. Depending on the chosen specimen geometry, the low-pressure as well as the high-pressure case can be investigated with this method. In the first case, the specimen has a shape of a conical tube, whereas in the second case, the specimen shows a hollow cylindrical shape (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Conical tube specimen for low-pressure configuration, (left); hollow cylindrical specimen for high-pressure configuration (right).

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Due to the volume constraints in the high-pressure configuration, the cylindrical geometry allows a significant increase of the hydrostatic pressure. This is the major advantage of the cylindrical specimen with respect to pressure sensitivity. The low-pressure configuration test has already been presented.[8, 9] The reader is referred to them for detailed discussions concerning the conical specimens. Tools with different coatings and the schematic experimental layout for this setup are depicted in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Tools and the specimens for low-pressure configuration for different coatings, (left); schematic view of conical test experimental setups (right).

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
This section summarizes the results of the experimental investigations of the high-pressure case, using the cylindrical specimens. Figure 5 shows the deformed ring after the test. The difficulty in the evaluation of this configuration is the correct detection of the zones where the slip occurs. Based on finite element modeling and experimental observation, most of friction occurs at inner surface, as well as on the surface between the rotating tool and cylindrical specimen.

Figure 5. Deformed hollow cylindrical specimen after the experiment. Figure 6 (left) shows the measured moment for different angular velocities at a constant temperature T = 450C, and a constant axial force F = 1200N. Torsion values increase with higher velocities, whereas by increasing the temperature, torsion decreased; see Figure 6 (right). The average value of measured torsion is used for the computation of evaluation of Equation 6.

0.125

0.25

1.25

2.5

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Figure 6. Torsion values at different angular velocities, with a constant temperature T = 450C, and an axial force F = 1200N (left);, relation between stable torsion and relative velocity at different temperatures by considering a constant normal load 1200N (right). The relationship between torsion and velocity at a specific axial force and temperature is shown in Figure 7 (left). Figure 7 (right) depicts the influence of axial loading on torsion at a constant temperature for different rotational velocities. Torsion increases when the axial force or velocity increases.

0.125

0.25

1.25

Figure 7. Torsion values at constant temperature T = 400C, and an axial force F = 1800N (left); relation between torsion and angular velocity at different axial forces by considering a constant temperature T = 400C (right).

FRICTION MODELS
As mentioned before, from the physical point of view friction is a very complex phenomenon. Various models have been developed to describe friction and evaluate frictional forces. In bulk metal forming, the critical shear stress, when the material plastically flows, is a limiting value for the maximal friction stress. This is the typical case in the extrusion contact. The pressure applied on the surface of the workpiece can be much higher than the yield stress. Frictional stress cannot exceed the shear flow stress or the shear failure stress of the material. Coulombs law may overestimate the friction forces although the frictional coefficient may seem to be reasonable. As it is shown in Figure 8, Coulombs law is then no longer suitable under these circumstances where the normal stress becomes large.

Figure 8. Deviation of the Coulomb model from the real observed case.

[10]

It is clear that the friction stress on the surface of the workpiece is one component of the stress tensor that determines the local yield state. If the von-Mises flow rule is used, the yield condition is:

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(Equation 1) where denotes the yield stress. Assuming that the shear stress is the friction force per unit area in the x-direction, then in the extreme case when all other stress components are zero, i.e., , we obtain:

(Equation 2) If other components are not zero, the friction stress must be smaller. A friction coefficient m is often employed to describe the friction stress as:

(Equation 3) The factor m may vary between zero and one, according to different stress states.[11] This model assumes a constant interfacial shear stress unlike Coulomb friction. When m = 1, the model assumes sticking friction. For those reasons, it is physically more reasonable to replace the Coulomb friction model by the so-called shear friction model. The weakness of this model is the fact that, if the profile will not be deformed any more, then the strain rate dependent yield stress drops to zero (see figure 9). To avoid this case, Hora and Karadogan[3, 8] have proposed a modified version with a minimal friction for zero strain rates:

(Equation 4)

Figure 9, Frictional behavior during hot aluminum extrusion between billet and tooling In addition too, the material behavior was described with a modified Zehner-Hollomon equation as proposed by Tong:[12] (Equation 5) where A, Q, m, , N, and n are material constants. is the true stress [MPa], R is the ideal gas constant and equal to 8.314 [J/mol K], T is the absolute temperature [K], and and are strain and strain rate, respectively.

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Aluminum alloy EN AW-6110A is the tested material which is used as an extruded material. The Chemical composition of EN AW-6110A is given in Table 1. Material constants based on Equation 5 have been shown in Table 2. Also, the flow curve of this kind of material at different temperatures is shown in Figure 10. Table1, Chemical composition of EN AW-6110A according to[13] 0.7-1.1 0.50 Cu 0.30-0.8 Mn 0.30-0.9 Mg 0.7-1.1 Cr 0.05-0.25 Zn 0.2

Table 2. Zehner-Hollomon parameters. for Al6110A A 0.9653 Q 2.6e+04 m 1 0.1733 N 14.236

Figure 10. Flow curve of EN AW-6110A at different temperatures and constant strain rate

Evaluation Methods
The difficulty in the evaluation of the High Pressure -Torsion Compression Test (HP-TCT) is the detection of the zones where the slip occurs. Depending on the inner or outer radius (see Figure 11), the moment in inner and outer surface can be , where is shear stress at a specific temperature. A and R show calculated by the equation contact cross area and radius, respectively. By evaluating this equation, and considering , yields , this shows that the inner contact interface tends to slip earlier. Based on the finite element simulation, we can say that the most part of friction occurs in the front and inner surfaces between the rotating tool and the specimen. So, the total moment is calculated by using Equation 6: (Equation 6) where: (Equation 7)

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is the moment of the inner surface, and is the moment of the front surface between specimen and the rotating tool. is a contribution of outer and back contact surfaces which can be found by comparing the torsion results of finite element modeling and experimental values.

Figure 11. Dimension and defined surfaces of the cylindrical specimen. Investigation of friction phenomena (i.e., slip and stick, wear, etc.) is a difficult task. Therefore, finding a proper friction model for the numerical simulation of processes is also difficult. It is noteworthy that we do not intend to involve all the factors to describe friction; neither is it possible for users from industry to determine many parameters by complicated experiments. We seek a simple but effective description to calculate the frictional forces. Based on the experimental data, a simplified equation for the computation of the friction coefficient is proposed in Equation 8. This model relates the friction coefficient m to pressure and relative velocity:

(Equation 8) where is a preliminary friction, and A, B, q, n, and k are constant values. These values at constant temperature of 400C are shown in Table 3. P and are pressure and relative velocity, respectively. and are references values. This leads to a more general description of the experimental and numerical results. Table 3. Parameters of Equation 8 at temperature 400C. 0. 1583 [MPa] 250 [mm/s] 8 A 0. 9258 B 0.0383 q 18.5631 n 1.9518 k 0.3259

Figure 12 shows the friction coefficient at different relative velocities and pressures. The friction coefficient increases by increasing the relative velocity or pressure. This investigation shows that by increasing the velocity, the friction coefficient tends to approximate a saturation value.

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Figure 12. Friction coefficient as a function of relative velocity and pressure at the constant temperature 400C. Figure 13 shows the fitting surface, based on the aforementioned equation, which is used to compute the torsion and friction coefficient at constant temperature T = 400C. The applicability of the model will be checked by comparison of the real behavior of the four holes extrusion test with numerical results. This is ongoing and will present in future work.

Figure 13. Computed values using Equation 8 for the constant temperature T = 400C.

SIMULATION OF HP-TCT
Simulating of High Pressure, Torsion Compression Test has been done by LS_DYNA. LS-DYNA is designed for transient dynamic analysis of highly nonlinear problems. The essential ingredient determining the solution properties is the use of an explicit time integration scheme. Figure 14 depicts temperature distribution through the experiment at three different time steps. Fortunately finite element simulation shows that there is a homogeneous temperature distribution after 180 seconds of heating up and before applying mechanical loading.

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Figure 14. Temperature distribution of hollow cylindrical specimen during heating up of the specimen. Also, the effective plastic strain of the specimen after the test (compression and torsion) in inner and outer surfaces of the specimen has been shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15. Plastic strain in the inner and outer surfaces of the hollow cylindrical specimen.

CONCLUSION
In comparison with conventional friction test setups, the presented experiments represent more conditions similar to hot extrusion operations. The presented experimental setup enables the investigation of the friction due to contact pressure, rotational velocity, and temperature. The experimental data are used to determine the parameters of the introduced numerical model, which relates the friction coefficient with the angular velocity and axial force for a constant temperature. The presented experimental and numerical results show the applicability of this new test and they encourage further developments of the models. Introducing models based on physical phenomena still remains a challenge. Incorporating the temperature dependence of the friction coefficient and determination of the model parameters based on an inverse optimization procedure is the subject of the current research.

REFERENCES
1. Hora, P., Karadogan, C., Tong, L., "Numerische Modellierung thermischer und tribologischer Randbedingungen," Conference Proceedings: Extrusion Zurich, 2005. 2. Karadogan, C., Vanini, F., Tong, L., Hora, P., State of the Art and Potential Development of Digital Extrusion Modeling, Light Metal Age, Volume 63, May 2005, No. 3, pp. 40-43.

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3. Karadogan, C., Tong, L., Hora, P., An Improved Modeling of Friction for Extrusion Simulations, AIP Conference Proceedings, 10TH ESAFORM Conference on Material Forming, Vol. 907, 2007, pp. 1325-1330. 4. Bjrk, T., Bergstrm, J., Hogmark, S., Tribological simulation of aluminium hot extrusion, Wear, Vol. 224, 1999, pp. 216-225. 5. Meier zu Kcker, G., Habig, K.H., Influence of different production parameters on the functional behaviour of tools and parts after coating, Surface and Coatings Technology, Vol. 82, No. 3, 1996, pp. 294-304. 6. Terelj, M., Smolej, A., Fajfar, P., Turk, R., Laboratory assessment of wear on nitrided surfaces of dies for hot extrusion of aluminium, Tribology International, Vol. 40, No. 2, 2007, pp. 374-384. 7. Mills, B., Redford, A.H., Wear testing of die materials rubbing against aluminium and copper, Ann CIRP, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1979, pp. 165-169. 8. Karadogan, C., Grueebler, R., Hora, P., A new cone-friction test for evaluating friction phenomena in extrusion processes, Key Engineering Materials, Vol. 424, 2010, pp. 161-166. 9. Hora, P., Gorji, M., Berisha, B., Modeling of friction phenomena in extrusion processes by using a new torsion-friction test, Key Engineering Materials, Vol. 491, 2012, pp 129-135. 10. Karadogan, C., Advanced Methods in Numerical Modeling of Extrusion Processes, Dissertation, ETH Zurich, 2005 11. Tong L., FE Simulation of Bulk Forming Processes with a Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian Formulation, Dissertation, ETH Zurich, 1995. 12. Tong, L., Stahel, S., Hora, P., Modeling for the FE-Simulation of Warm Metal Forming Processes, NUMISHEET 2005, Vol. 778, 2005, pp. 625-629. 13. Aluminium and aluminium alloys Chemical composition and form of wrought products Part 3: Chemical composition and form of products, German version EN 573-3, 2009

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