COUPLED THERMO-VISCOPLASTIC FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF PLANE-STRAIN COMPRESSION OF POROUS MATERIALS.

Abstract

The finite element formulation for deformation of porous materials including compressibility of the material and the effect of temperature was developed and applied to the problem of plane-strain compression of sintered iron-power bars. The formulation employed a phenomenological approach for the deformation analysis. A simple linear relationship between the thermal conductivities of the powdered metal and the base metal was derived and used as a first approximation for temperature calculations. The computed results are compared with experimental values in terms of macroscopic densification and forging pressures.