Innovative concept of severe plastic deformation manufacturing system to enhance classic equal channel angular drawing method: a preliminary study for flexible manufacturing systems looking to Industry 4.0

Equal channel angular drawing (ECAD) represents the most successful severe plastic deformation (SPD) technique for continuous industrial manufacturing of longer wires, with a constant cross section, characterized by smaller diameters and better mechanical properties (i.e. high strains and hardness) mainly attributed to the grain size refinement. In this paper an advanced innovative concept to impose SPD, on commercial 1370 pure aluminium wires (Al 99.7%), is proposed to improve the flexibility of the classic manufacturing method of ECAD by controlling and regulating process parameters in real time to obtain several combinations of mechanical properties and to increase manufacture productivity. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of mechanical and microstructural changes occurring during ECAD process and, preserving the principle of the ECAD method, describes an innovative concept of plastic deformation showing the potential improvements to practice. The proposed manufacturing system has been validated by finite element analysis (FEA) implementing a flow stress empirical model that includes the influence of the grain size change, for the material behaviour and two customized user-subroutines for predicting grain refinement and hardness variation. The study demonstrates the possibility to renew the classic industrial techniques within an Industry 4.0 ecosystem.