The preform design in metal forging plays a key role in improving product quality, such as defect-free property and proper metal flow. In the industry, preforms are generally designed by the iterative trial-and-error approach, but this approach leads not only to significant cost of the tools but also to the down-time of the production equipments. It is thus necessary to reduce time and man-power through an effective method of preform design.
In this study, the equi-potential lines designed in the electric field are introduced to find the preform shape. The equi-potential lines generated between two conductors of different voltages show similar trends of the minimum work paths between the undeformed shape and the deformed shape. Based on this similarity, the equi-potential lines obtained by arrangement of the initial and final shapes are utilized for the design of preform, and then the artificial neural network is used to find the range of initial volume and potential value of the electric filed.
The objective of this study is to propose a new technique for preform design in axisymmetric hot forging. The valid equi-potential lines as preform shapes are determined by considering the proposed filling ratio. In order to find the range of the factors, the following two aspects are considered : i) To find the range of the initial volume and potential for the preform of a product, ii) To determine the range of the factors for the preform of a new product based on the information of similar products already known. The influence of initial billet geometry is considered by the study of aspect ratio. In order to show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed scheme, the simulated experiments are carried out using the material of plasticine for the case with the preform designed by the proposed method as well as for the case without preform. From the comparison of the experiment with the suggested theoretical prediction, it has been shown that the proposed method could be effectively applied to practical design of preform for hot forging.
