Basic Experimental and Numerical Investigations on Chip Pressing

Aluminium alloys show a great potential for lightweight constructions due to their high strength and low density but the production of this material is very energy consuming. Also the recycling of aluminium alloys, e.g. chips from the milling process, shows different challenges. Beside contamination by cooling lubricant and oxidation of the surface of the chips the melting and rolling process for new semi finish products needs a high amount of energy. TEKKAYA shows a new approach for recycling of aluminium alloy chips by an extrusion process at elevated temperatures producing different kinds of profiles. A new idea is the production of components directly out of chips using severe plastic deformation for joining of the chips similar to the accumulative roll bonding process in sheet metal forming. In a first approach aluminium alloy chips out of a milling process were uniaxial compressed with different loads inside an axisymmetric tool installed in a universal testing machine. The compressed chip disks subsequently were tested with two experiments to gain information on their stability. First experiment is a disk compression test with the disk standing on its cylindrical surface, giving information on the stability perpendicular to the compression direction. Second experiment is a stacked disk compression test with three disks to investigate the stability parallel to compression direction. During all three tests force and displacement values are recorded by the universal testing machine. These data are also processed to calculate or identify input parameters for the numerical investigations. For numerical simulation ABAQUS in conjunction with the Drucker-Prager-Cap material model, which is often used for sintering processes, seems to be a good choice. By numerical simulation of the experiments and comparison with the experiments input parameters for the material model can be identified showing good accordance. This material model will be used in future numerical investigations of an extrusion process to identify tool geometries leading to high strains inside the material and by this to an increased stability of the parts.