Abstract
The significance of the casting/forging process for reducing the production cost of large components is being noted in these days. This casting/forging process is a method of forging a workpiece preformed by casting into the final shape. In this study, the casting/forging process has been applied in manufacturing a large aluminum flange in order to reduce press capacity and material cost. Firstly, a hot compression test was performed with cast cylindrical billets in order to determine the optimum forging condition of the aluminum flange. The optimum range of forging temperature of Al 5083 was from 420$\^{C}$ to 450$\^{C}$. The suitable strain rate was 1.5 sec(sup)-1. The deformation amount of a preform of a preform in a forging process is a key role in the mechanical properties of casting/forging products. In order to find the change of mechanical properties according to effective stain of cast aluminum billets, a hot upsetting test were performed with rectangular blocks and then a uniaxial tensile test was performed with specimens cut from the upsetted billets. The tensile strength and the elongation of cast/upsetted aluminum billets were increased largely until the effective strain was 0.7. FE analysis was performed to determine the configurations of case preform and die for an aluminum flange. In the FE analysis, the forging load-limit was fixed 1500ton for low equipment cost. The cast preform was designed so that the effective stain around the neck of a flange exceeded 0.7. From the result of FE analysis, optimal configurations of the cast preform and the die were designed for a large flange. The filling and solidification analysis for a sound cast-preform was carried out with MAGMA soft. In the forging experiment for an aluminum flange, it was confirmed that the optimal configuration of the cast preform predicted by FE analysis was very useful. The cast/forged products using designed preform were made perfectly without any defects.
