Experimental study and numerical simulation of isothermal closed die forging for aluminium alloy rotor

The closed die forging(or fully-enclosed die forging) method was employed to form a rotor instead of the conventional machining method. A combined female die was designed so that the rotor could be released easily from the female die after forging. In order to improve the metal flow ability, the isothermal forming technique was introduced to the closed die forging process. On the basis of the rigid-viscoplastic FEM principle, the DEFORM 3D software package was employed to simulate the forming process. The simulation results illustrate that the deformation of different part of the billet is not the same. The material near the entrance of the die cavity is deformed greatly whose strain rate and strain are both large, while the deformation of the material at the billet center is much smaller.