3. FEM analysis of an extrusion process
The purpose of this section is to highlight the importance of a correct
setting in a FEM code and the utility of the same to simulate the extrusion
process of a mixture made of tungsten carbide. More precisely, the
analyses do not concern all the steps of the process, but only the flow of
the WC–Co mixture inside an extrusion die. In the specific case, FEM
analyses are intended to verify if the die imposes a correct rotation to
themixture under actual process conditions. For this aim, FEManalyses
are carried out by LS-DYNA 971 software. This computational code is
widely used for analyses involving materials with nonlinear behavior.