Contrast of FEM and FVM in simulation of complex aluminum extrusion

Extrusion is the key technology to manufacture aluminum profiles and involves complicate metal deformation coupled with temperature changes. The choice of numerical technique plays an important role and is related to the accuracy and effectiveness of extrusion process analyses. In this paper, the extrusion processes of two complex aluminum profiles are simulated with FEM and FVM respectively. The merit and disadvantage of these two methods are analyzed. The finite element method exhibits higher calculation efficiency in the simulation of a lock catch extrusion process. However, due to frequent rezoning in simulation of complex extrusion process, sharp distortion of finite element mesh can decrease computational accuracy. Therefore the volume loss in FEM simulation is larger than that in FVM simulation by five percent. Based on Euler description, the finite volume method employs structured element mesh covering entire material flowing area, which makes it more robust in the simulation of complicate extrusion process. The deformation configuration with FVM is much smoother than that with FEM in the extrusion simulation of a thin-walled aluminum profile, although FVM requires more computation time.