Abstract
The production of requirement and weight optimized hybrid components can make an effective contribution to saving energy and conserving resources in production technology. For this reason, current research activities at the Institute for Metal Forming Technology, University of Stuttgart are focusing on the manufacturing of hybrid components using semi-solid forming strategies. Thereby, a new forming process was investigated in which two different aluminium alloys are simultaneously heated up into the semi-solid state and subsequently formed to a hybrid component. During the forming step, an intermetallic phase between the different materials is produced, which decisively determines the functional properties of the manufactured hybrid components.In this context, this paper deals with the inductive heating and semi-solid forming of hybrid semi-finished materials consisting of two aluminium alloys having different melting points. By reason of the skin effect, which causes heating of material solely near the workpiece´s surface, inductive heated semi-finished materials show an inhomogeneous temperature distribution in its volumes. Therefore, the aluminium alloy having the higher melting point was assembled at the outer side and the alloy having the lower melting point was assembled in the core of the semi-finished material in order to achieve the desired heat distribution within the different materials for the subsequent semi-solid forming process. After this graded heat distribution was achieved in the semi-finished materials by the development of suitable heating strategies, forming trials were performed using a disc shaped design to investigate the material flow of such graded materials. Furthermore, the transition zone built was investigated by comparison of numerical modelling and experimental results.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call