Influence of the temperature on AA6061 aluminum alloy in a hot extrusion process

Nowadays, extrusion processes have a wide range of applications in manufacturing. The most commonly used materials in the manufacture of profiles are aluminum alloys. In the aluminum profiles manufacturing, the method more employed is hot extrusion process. In this kind process, there are many technological parameters that influence it, such as extrusion ratio, ram velocity and billet temperature. One of the most important variables in any hot manufacturing process is the temperature. In this work, the influence of the temperature in the extrusion process has been analyzed by means of the finite element method. The required load and the maximum exit velocity have been obtained considering different temperatures. In this study, in order to achieve a control of the process and to reach a good quality of extruded product, optimum values of the billet and the die temperatures have been obtained.