Effects of die chilling and flow stress characteristics on the deformation of non-isothermal forging of Ti-6A1-4V alloy

Non-isothermal forging is an economical production method compared with isothermal forging. The delay in operation time and die chilling effects, however, makes the process parameters difficult to control. In this paper, the analysis model using thermal-coupled finite element method was constructed to simulate the non-isothermal forging of Ti-6A1-4V alloy. The characteristics of flow stress, the contact time, and the die chilling effect on the non-uniform deformation of the non-isothermal forging processes were studied. The predicted results were verified with the forging experiment. It was concluded that the contact time is the key parameter to control the microstructure distribution and the deformation profile of the workpiece for Ti-6A1-4V alloy.