Nonlinear finite element analysis of metal powder die compaction using various plasticity models

Metal powder compaction and its FE analysis have gained enormous attention in the last decade, especially in automotive gear manufacture. However, no specific material model has been accepted as the standard for metal powders. This paper is an effort to study various material models in different geometries. Two case studies were modeled using ABAQUS/EXPLICIT FE package. For both case studies user-subroutine VUMAT was used to implement the material models, and density distributions were presented and compared with experimental work in literature. In the first case study, compaction of a simple plain bush component was simulated using a modified Cam-clay model (Chen and Mizuno 1990). In the second case study, compaction of a two-level part was simulated using Drucker-Prager cap model. The results showed that although the material model in this paper was relatively simpler than Coube (Coube and Riedel 2000), the predicted density distributions were in good agreement with the experimental measurements.