A Comparative Study on Flat and U-Shaped Copper Strips Produced by Continuous Extrusion

Abstract

The differences between flat and U-Shaped pure copper strips during a continuous extrusion process were investigated and analyzed through finite element simulation and experimentation. The simulation results showed that nearly all of the temperature-, velocity-, and loading-force-related parameters of the U-Shaped product at the die exit were smaller than those of the flat product, which indicated that extruding U-Shaped copper strips by continuous extrusion was superior to the flat strips. This conclusion was further verified experimentally by measuring the temperature and torque force. Then, a comparative analysis of the microstructure of the two cases was carried out. The average grain size of the U-Shaped strips was 65.6 µm, which was smaller than that of the flat strips, which was 96.7 µm. In addition, the microstructure of the U-Shaped strips was more uniform and had a higher recrystallization ratio, which can be attributed to the even and severe plastic deformation. This study thus solves the size limitation issue that existed in continuous extrusion.

Keywords

• continuous extrusion
• expansion forming
• processing parameters
• copper strips
• microstructure