Process Design and Simulation for Digital Twinning of Thixoforming

Thixoforming and Industry 4.0 are both hot topics in today's manufacturing sector. Being shown as one of the future metal forming trends, thixoforming has promising potential due to its unique process features. Integrating thixoforming processes into Industry 4.0 is highly challenging due to various factors such as the complexity of the process and tool flexibility. In order to reflect the complexity of real-life thixoforming operations and design the required tooling, a digital twin of the process can be generated using computational techniques such as computer-aided design and finite element analysis (FEA). In this chapter, being one of the most common thixoforming operations, a detailed model of closed-die thixoforging is simulated using the FEA tool Ansys Mechanical. A theoretical material model to be incorporated into the numerical models is proposed to realistically mimic thixoforging. Additionally, a conceptual design for a flexible die is introduced. The results obtained from the simulations show good agreement with real-life thixoforging operations.