Overview
3DSimulator has been developed by extrusion experts to be integrated into die design or extrusion process
3DS has been developed in collaboration with Extruders, dies makers and University of Lausanne (EPFL), using real extrusion data.
3DS performs fast three-dimensional simulations of the extrusion process, die stress & deformation.
3DS is automatized and user friendly, no prior knowledge of numerical simulation is needed, it can be used by designers and technicians
Costly and time-consuming, die trials on presses can be replaced by virtual prototyping, also leading to reduce corrections costs and increase die life.
Advantage of 3DS
3DS offers an efficient and fast analysis tool for virtual testing, validation, correction, and optimization of extrusion die designs. The optimized algorithms strongly reduce the calculation time allowing companies to include a simulation phase in the die design process or correction process.
Simulation can be performed between 30 minutes for normal case to less than 2h for very complex cases.
- 3DS helps designers to optimize their die design according to flow balance and die deflection, proceeding to several simulation in a day
- 3DS helps correctors to reduce the number of trials, to understand die problems and validate modification before applying them
- 3DS helps extruders to validate and optimize extrusion parameters improving productivity by testing extrusion sets in few minutes
3DS gives accurate results thanks to constitutive laws obtained from experiments on real production at presses. It supports commonly used alloys including hard alloys
Capabilities
The user is thus in particular able to:
- simulate solid, semi-hollow, porhole dies / multi-holes dies / feeder plates and spreaders
- determine causes for flow imbalance and non-uniformity of the velocity at the bearing entrance
- predict the extrusion pressure
- predict the profile exit temperature
- predict the quality of seam welds
- determine transverse weld length in order to minimize weld scrap
- calculate die pressure, temperature and stress
- predict die deflection and mandrel shift during extrusion
- visualize the profile shape deformation
- identify causes for tool breakage