Plastic Deformation and Computer Simulations of Equal Channel Angular Pressing

Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) is a generic designation of a group of metal-working techniques involving very large shear strains which are imposed, in combination with hydrostatic pressure, without any significant change in the overall dimensions of a specimen or a workpiece. This technique can produce miraculously fine grained structures below submicron scale. Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) is a unique and relatively simple metal forming process to the other metal forming processes, but still complex under coupled effects with multi-factors, such as geometric factors, material factors and processing conditions. Investigating the plastic deformation behavior in the deformation zone during ECAP is crucial for predicting the metal flow, microstructural evolution, controlling the quality of deformed workpiece and optimizing the ECAP process. In this review, modelling of ECAP using various numerical methods are reviewed. The papers from literature analyzing ECAP processing by the FEM are summarized and compared by software, mesh size, dimension, and analyzed results. It can be found that not only stress, strain, velocity, and fracture tendency but also their distributions in terms of the effects of the processing variables (speed, size, friction, die geometries, etc.) can be predicted.