Advances in Science and Technology Research Journal Volume 11, Issue 2, June 2017, pages 187–191 Research Article DOI: 10.12913/22998624/70998 SIMULATION OF HELICAL GEAR FORMING OF AZ31 MAGNESIUM MATERIAL Önder Ayer1 1 Trakya University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Edirne, Turkey, e-mail: [email protected] Received: 2017.03.15 ABSTRACT Accepted: 2017.05.05 The simulation of helical gear forming is investigated in this study. AZ31 type mag- Published: 2017.06.01 nesium material was selected for workpiece material because of its high specific strength. The finite element method was used to simulate the closed die upsetting method for magnesium material of helical gear upsetting. Three dimensional finite element analyses were carried out to obtain the forming load, effective stress, effective strain and temperature change with DEFORM-3D software. Keywords: AZ31, Gear forming, Helical gears, FEM, DEFORM-3D. INTRODUCTION applicable to internal teeth. The process is rapid and produces a fine surface finish with high di- It is well known that gears were used for ir- mensional accuracy. However, because broaches rigation systems in Mesopotamia. Romans used are expensive and a separate broach is required cast bronze or iron gears for longer service life in for each size of gear, this method is suitable ancient times. Nowadays, gears are used in sever- mainly for high-quantity production. These afore- al areas such as transmissions, complex machines mentioned conventional manufacturing processes and so many different industrial applications. mainly cause the high amount of material loss for Gears are generally manufactured by machining mass production. Conversely, the bulk forming or by a combination of conventional hot forging processes like forging are generally preferred for with machining requiring a lot of manufacturing material savings and much more important than time, which means more expensive manufactur- this; the bulk forming processes improves the me- ing. Instead of conventional machining, plastic chanical strength of the workpiece due to grain deformation processes can be used for the manu- refinement and unbroken grain flow [5, 10, 13, facturing of gear forms because of their advan- 14, 18]. In addition to this, the forged parts are tages. Injection upsetting is a plastic deforma- almost without holes and pores [4, 11]. The injec- tion process in which a block/billet is reduced in tion upsetting method was one of the bulk form- cross-section by forcing it through the closed die ing methods and is specialized to form intricate with the desired shape of a final product. shapes. And, for metal forming operations form- Gear manufacturing is generally carried out ing load is the most important parameter and so, with conventional methods such as form milling it is important to estimate the forming load for the and broaching. In form milling, the tool called a metal forming processes for optimal die design form cutter travels axially along the length of the and selecting press capacity [3, 7, 9, 14]. Mathe- gear tooth at the appropriate depth to produce the matical methods are getting used more commonly gear tooth. After each tooth is cut, the tool is with- in recent years to simulate the forming load and drawn, the gear blank is rotated, and the cutter other process parameters which affect the qual- proceeds to cut another tooth. The process contin- ity of the product and it is possible to obtain op- ues until all teeth are cut. Broaching can also be timum die design. The Finite Element Method used to manufacture gear teeth and is particularly is useful for the accurate prediction of forming 187 Advances in Science and Technology Research Journal Vol. 11 (2), 2017 loads, strains and stresses for forming gear like Selecting work piece material is the starting elements such as spur gear. point to obtain the optimum production method DEFORM-3D software is one of the power- and achieve better physical and mechanical prop- ful FEM based commercial pieces of software, erties for the product. Also there is more to it than which is specialized for metal forming operations that, such as saving weight is generally a main like extrusion, forging and so on. The software is objective to select the workpiece material for the effective at saving costs and delays of trial-error last decade. Magnesium offers so many advantag- approach in industrial forming operations [6]. es with having higher specific strength and lower There are several researchers studied on the FEM density comparing to other engineering materials method to simulate the gear forming [1]. Chen et such as steel and aluminum. The most relevant al. [10] used DEFORM-3D software to examine alloys for the production of magnesium forgings the separate influences of process parameters on are AZ80, ZK30, ZK60 and WE alloys. AZ alloys the plastic deformation behavior of an aluminum show a good combination of strength and ductil- billet extrusion. Behrens [4] investigated closed- ity as well as a good corrosion resistance as high die cold sizing process of a straight-toothed plan- purity alloys [5]. In this study, FEM based soft- etary gear in terms of the occurring elastic die ware DEFORM was used to simulate the forging deflection. Chitkara and Bhutta [11] investigated of helical gear of AZ31 material for 623K. the upsetting of spur gear forms both experimen- tally and mathematically. Xu et. al. [21] analyzed MATERIALS AND METHODS the deformation characteristics and revealed the mechanisms of spinning defects and the influ- In the presented study, helical gear form is ences of process parameters. Pérez et. al. [15] in- one of the most used gear types for higher speed vestigated the isothermal forging of two different and higher torque applications. The helical gear gears from material which was deformed initially has 24 teeth where module value is selected as by Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP). Pe- 1.23. Pitch diameter and root diameters for gear pelnjak et. al. studied the simulation of the warm were selected as Ø32 mm. and Ø27.20mm re- forging of magnesium alloy in digital environ- spectively. The helix angle of helical gear is 8° ment. [20] Paltasingh et. al. studied the experi- and pressure angle was selected as 20° for the mental and dynamic simulation study of lateral study. Injection upsetting process was used to extrusion of spur gears with involute tooth profile form AZ31 Magnesium material. The workpiece in terms of load requirement, die filling and mate- material diameter is Ø30mm. and its height is de- rial flow. Effective stress and strain, die filling, fined as 50mm. for the CAD model. flow patterns and prediction of extrusion loads The workpiece material is selected as AZ31 were examined with three dimensional finite el- type Magnesium. The AZ31 magnesium finds ement software and a series of experiments has applications in areas for different purposes, espe- been carried out [16]. Xu et. al. investigated a cially in the automotive industry due to its high multi-pass stagger spinning process of internally specific strength. AZ31 can be super-formed at el- toothed gear from plate blank through FEM simu- evated temperatures [8], hence, the process tem- lation and experiments [21]. Pater established a perature was simulated at 623K which is the suit- FEM model with DEFORM 3D software for the able forming temperature for AZ31 magnesium rolling of gear and conducted experiments which material.[20][14] demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed The deformation characteristics of magne- method for forming spur gears [17, 18]. sium material are improved with the relaxation Helical gears are basically very similar to of additional prismatic and pyramidal gliding spur gears. Helical gears work more smoothly planes. These gliding planes severely increase the and quietly compared to spur gears. Spur gears formability above 500K. The die materials were make a characteristic whine at high speed and selected from the DEFORM-3D material library. for this reason spur gears are used in low-speed The die material was selected as H13 for all die applications. Conversely, helical gears are used components. The selected product profile is com- in high-speed applications, large power trans- plex and so mesh distribution is homogenized for mission, or where noise abatement is impor- work-pieces. Mesh density was determined for tant. The lower speed value for pitch line veloc- work-piece material at 300.000 elements. Higher ity is 25m/s. mesh density gives more accurate FEM results. 188 Advances in Science and Technology Research Journal Vol. 11 (2), 2017 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The FEM model was built in DEFORM 3D software. The load-displacement diagram with FEM model is given in Fig. 3. The displacement value was calculated for workpiece to fulfill the die cavity as 18mm. The diagram can be divided into two different stages. At the first stage, the material is compressed and upsetting takes place at the same time until the end of the contact of the material with the die wall. At the second stage, extrusion process occurs and material flows later- ally with the movement of the punch and it con- tinues until the filling of the die cavity. The die Fig. 1. True Stress-Strain curve of AZ31 for 623K filling ratio is one of the main parameters for the injection upsetting process. The die filling ratio is calculated from the simulation results as 99.2% for the proposed FEM model. In a similar study, The global remeshing was chosen and the type Wang et. al. [19] observed an underfilling prob- of interference depth was selected as relative. A lem in their study. It can be seen that maximum direct iteration method was selected for initial es- forming load is achieved at 25mm. punch dis- timations and the Newton-Raphson method was placement and obtained as 77kN.