Finite element method simulation of metal flow during Tubular Channel Angular Pressing (TCAP) of aluminium 7075

Tubular Channel Angular Pressing (TCAP) is among the upcoming and highly interesting, severe plastic deformation methods (SPD). This technique is reported to be appropriate for the deformation of very large strains in cylindrical tubes. The tube is pressed by a top die in a space between a mandrel and a die containing three shear zones while maintaining the same tube thickness and diameters. To investigate the SPD process in tubular samples, a commercially available pure aluminium alloy (AA7075) was used to evaluate the influence of die geometry, coefficient of friction, pressing speed, die temperature and tube thickness. The average grain size of about 500 nm was attained from 25 μm by extensive grain refinement. The results of Finite Element (FE) indicated that an effective strain of 3 was achieved by correctly choosing the input parameters. The thickness and length of the tube processed by TCAP also exhibited excellent strain homogeneity. The TCAP process can impose large strains because of having three deformation zones. Depending on input parameters selection, this SPD method, therefore, has two major advantages; (i) excellent strain homogeneity and (ii) high effective strain.