A Numerical Simulation of the Hot Isostatic Pressing of Ti-6Al-4V powder considering the uneven powder distribution

Abstract

In the process of powder hot isostatic pressing (HIP), there is always an error between the actual shrinkage of powder and the predicted value of numerical simulation. To explore the cause of this error, a numerical model is established to simulate the HIP process. The initial relative density of the powder is usually set to 0.65, which we think is the main reason for the error. So in this simulation, the initial relative density is subdivided into 4 gradients to simulate the uneven distribution in the capsule. By comparing the simulation and experiment results, we find that different relative densities have a great influence on the final powder densification. The maximum error of the simulation with the usual initial relative density setting of 0.65 is 4.2%. However, considering the uneven distribution of initial powder, the maximum error is reduced to 3.16%, and the average error is also less than 2%