Inverse Modeling Applied for Material Characterization of Powder Materials

An investigation is performed concerning the applicability of inverse procedures, using optimization and simple experiments, for characterization of WC/Co powder materials. The numerical procedure is combined with uniaxial die-compaction experiments using an instrumented die, which allows direct measurement of the distribution of radial stress during the experiments. Finite-element (FE) methods and an advanced constitutive description of powder materials are relied upon to model the compaction experiment. Optimization using a surrogate model is used to determine some of the parameters in the constitutive description. These parameters in the material model are said to be found (with some accuracy) if the output from the FE simulation is similar to the experimental data. It is found that even though a complete constitutive description of the powder materials investigated cannot be achieved using this approach, many important material parameters can be determined with good accuracy.