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Liquid nitrogen in the industrial practice of hot aluminium extrusion: experimental and numerical investigation

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Abstract

Nowadays, the liquid nitrogen cooling in aluminium extrusion is a widely adopted industrial practice to increase the process productivity as well as to improve the extruded profile surface quality by reducing the profile exit temperatures. The cooling channels are commonly designed on the basis of die maker experience only, usually obtaining modest performances in terms of cooling efficiency. Trial-and-error approach is time and cost consuming, thus providing a relevant industrial interest in the development of reliable numerical simulations able to foresee and optimize the nitrogen cooling effect during the die design stage. In this work, an extensive experimental campaign was performed during the extrusion process of an AA6060 industrial hollow profile, in different conditions of nitrogen flow rate and ram speed. The monitored data (die and profile temperatures and extrusion load) were compared with the outputs of a fast and efficient numerical model proposed by the authors, and developed in the COMSOL Multiphysics code, able to compute not only the effect of nitrogen liquid flow but also the gaseous condition. The results of the simulations showed a good agreement with experimental data, and evidenced how far the experimental cooling channel design from an optimized condition was.

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Not applicable.

Code availability

Commercial code COMSOL Multiphysics (software application).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DISMI Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Amendola 2, 42122, Reggio Emilia, Italy

    Riccardo Pelaccia & Barbara Reggiani

  2. DIN Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136, Bologna, Italy

    Marco Negozio & Lorenzo Donati

Authors
  1. Riccardo Pelaccia
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  2. Barbara Reggiani
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  3. Marco Negozio
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  4. Lorenzo Donati
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Riccardo Pelaccia, Barbara Reggiani, Marco Negozio and Lorenzo Donati. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Riccardo Pelaccia and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Riccardo Pelaccia.

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Pelaccia, R., Reggiani, B., Negozio, M. et al. Liquid nitrogen in the industrial practice of hot aluminium extrusion: experimental and numerical investigation. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 119, 3141–3155 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08422-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08422-3

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