Deformation behaviour of bulk materials during repetitive upsetting-extrusion (RUE)

Repetitive upsetting-extrusion (RUE) that was originally invented to process powder materials for bulk mechanical alloying is currently being used to process bulk materials. Bulk materials are subjected to severe plastic deformation using the same die design that was used to process powder materials. As the deformation behaviour of powder and bulk materials are quite different, it has to be evaluated whether a single die design is suitable to process both these materials. Further, information on the deformation behaviour and strain homogeneity that can be achieved by subjecting bulk materials to RUE process are also currently not available. To address these issues, both numerical analysis and actual experiments on commercial pure copper has been carried out. The results obtained are presented and discussed here