Mathematical modeling of the aluminum extrusion process to support the development of a virtual optimization software package

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Over the last couple of years, Castool (a tool designer and manufacturer for the extrusion industry) havedeveloped a software tool called VOS (Visual Optimization Software). The original purpose for this softwarewas to assist extrusion plants in optimizing the productivity of their extruders based on the alloy and profilethey were extruding. Although the original intent was to use the VOS to help optimize and predictproductivity, the reality is that VOS has ended up more as a die database with historical information. What islacking is the quantitative knowledge of the relationship between the extrusion variables and the pressurerequired and exit temperature. Castool has started to put together something more useful from the VOS whichwill tell the extruder what productivity they can expect for any combination of profile, die, billet and pressset-up however the still lack quantitative knowledge on the relationship between these variables.Initially, Castool was going to convert real pressure data (from Almag in Brampton) into temperature andtherefore speed, but this is so approximate that it is unlikely to be of great use. Castool intend to continue thisconversion of pressure to temperature but had difficulties getting good information from Almag.What Castool would like to do now is develop a simple and fast, almost real-time, parametric models with thevariables, extrusion ratio, billet temperature, container temperature and predict maximum speed and diebearing and extrusion exit temperatures.The focus of this research will be to develop a mathematical model to accurately predict the temperature andextrusion load for a range of cases so that correlations between the tooling temperature, extrusion ratio, ramspeed and billet temperature can be made with respect to extrudate temperature upon exit and pressure during