Abstract
Numerical simulation is nowadays becoming a standard tool in industrial processes. This paper provides an insight about the usage of finite element calculations in the development and production process in the steel mill of Böhler Edelstahl GmbH, Kapfenberg, Austria. Simulation methods are used all along the value chain at the mill starting with melting and casting of the steel. Nevertheless this paper focuses on the simulation of hot forming and heat treatment as well as on the simulations done as a service for our customers. Considering as example a hot work tool steel of type 1.2343 the production chain from forging over the pre heat treatment at the mill to the application as a tool for aluminium extrusion is surveyed. The forming of the casted and remelted steel block is done on a radial forging machine (swaging machine) of the type GFM SX55. The simulation takes into account five passes and delivers strains and temperatures within the work piece. Afterwards the pre heat treatment cycle of the part consisting of heating, quenching in polymer solution and subsequent air cooling is modelled. Simulation services are provided to the customers to optimize the material selection for their specific applications. The aforementioned tool steel is used as liner or die material in the extrusion industry. By a combination of a visco-plastic material model and a damage model it is possible to predict the lifetime of the tools in use. In order to obtain the residual stresses and phase distribution after nitrogen quenching a heat treatment simulation of the die is performed. Afterwards a simulation of the extrusion process is carried out to get the distribution of effective stress and temperature in the die. The calculated life time as well as the predicted location of the maximum damage agrees well with observations from real extrusion processes.