Recent developments in automatic die design for profile extrusion

Abstract The current state of the automatic design of dies for the extrusion of thermoplastic profiles is described, with particular emphasis on the work of the present authors. The main problems associated with the automatic design approach are set out and a description is given of how they were solved. A case study is used to compare the adequacy of several die design strategies implemented, not only in terms of the performance attained for the resulting dies when used in the conditions adopted in their optimisation, but also in terms of their robustness when those conditions are varied. It was concluded that the most efficient design strategy is that based on the die parallel zone length optimisation coupled with the use of flow separators and that the most robust die is that based on the die parallel zone thickness optimisation.