Damage analysis of extrusion tools made from the austenitic hot work tool steel Böhler W750

During hot extrusion of copper alloys, extrusion tools have to withstand cyclic thermal and mechanical loads. To enhance the service life of the tools, materials with high temperature strength are designed as well as an optimised process control is performed. To characterise the tool damage evolution during service and to improve process guiding, modelling and simulation are appropriate means. The extrusion process of copper billets at three different temperatures was simulated by an FE-program to obtain the temporal boundary conditions, i.e. stress and temperature distributions at the interface billet-liner. Those boundary conditions were used to simulate the elastic–viscoplastic behaviour of the tool steel Böhler W750 in service by means of Abaqus Standard™ v.6.8-3 software in conjunction with Z-Mat package. A lifetime rule was added in order to compute the lifetime consumption and the cycles to failure.