Optimal extrusion die design to achieve flow balance

Abstract

The design of a plane strain two-hole extrusion die is presented. This design example can be considered as a test case to judge the usefulness of the present method in the design of extrusion dies for uniform exit flow. Bearings for this die are to be designed so that the material exits both holes with parallel balanced flow. The finite-element method combined with techniques of mathematical programming is adopted. Derivatives of the objective function used during the optimization phase are efficiently computed using analytical sensitivity analysis and an optimal bearing length is reached after few iterations of the optimization procedure. Available experimental data for a two-out extrusion die with bearings have been used to validate the numerical results.