Process simulation of cold pressing of armstrong CP-Ti powders

A computational methodology is presented for the process simulation of cold pressing of Armstrong CPTi Powders. The computational model was implemented in the commercial finite element program ABAQUSTM. Since the powder deformation and consolidation is governed by specific pressuredependent constitutive equations, several solution algorithms were developed for the ABAQUS user material subroutine, UMAT. The solution algorithms were developed for computing the plastic strain increments based on an implicit integration of the nonlinear yield function, flow rule, and hardening equations that describe the evolution of the state variables. Since ABAQUS requires the use of a full Newton-Raphson algorithm for the stress-strain equations, an algorithm for obtaining the tangent/linearization moduli, which is consistent with the return-mapping algorithm, also was developed. Numerical simulation results are presented for the cold compaction of the Ti powders. Several simulations were conducted for cylindrical samples with different aspect ratios. The numerical simulation results showed that for the disk samples, the minimum von Mises stress was approximately half than its maximum value. The hydrostatic stress distribution exhibits a variation smaller than that of the von Mises stress. It was found that for the disk and cylinder samples the minimum hydrostatic stresses were approximately 23 and 50% less than its maximum value, respectively. It was also found that the minimum density was noticeably affected by the sample height.