Optimization of the extrusion process by means of a novel comprehensive approach

In light alloy extrusion process, different and conflicting objectives need to be achieved during die design stage in order to obtain an efficient and robust process. Among these, the production of extruded profiles within the required tolerances is of primary importance. A secondary aim, in case of profiles used for structural applications, is to guarantee adequate mechanical characteristics. In addition, the die has to resist without yielding under the selected process conditions. All these requirements are borne by the proper setting of process parameters and by die design. An extensive number of works are reported in literature for process and die design optimization. However, all these publications show the impact of a limited number of input parameters on a specific output that optimize the profile quality or, alternatively, the die life. Just one publication reports the multi-objective optimization of an extrusion process but the methodology is not clearly reported. Aim of this work is to extend this contribution to account for several input and output variables. To this aim, COMSOL Multiphyisics ® has been integrated with modeFRONTIER and the optimized solutions extracted from the Pareto frontier.