Effect of die design on the welding quality during solid state recycling of AA6060 chips by hot extrusion

Solid state recycling of aluminum chips by hot extrusion is a novel processing technique, which utilizes remarkably lower energies compared to conventional recycling by remelting. The mechanical properties of the extruded profiles can be improved by optimizing the effect of extrusion die design on the welding quality of machining chips. The chips were extruded through two dies of different design to produce solid rectangular profiles. One of the dies was a flat-face die, which represents a conventional extrusion die design for production of solid aluminum profiles. The second die was a porthole die typically used for complex hollow and semi hollow aluminum profiles. AA6060 chips were compacted at room temperature into billets and hot-extruded at approximately 500 °C to aluminum profiles. The microstructure and the mechanical properties of the profiles extruded through the flat-face and porthole dies were compared. The extrusion through the porthole die resulted in a much better welding of the chips and revealed more than 80% higher ductility compared to the profiles extruded through a flat-face die. The welding quality of the chips was studied using a two-step analytical approach: a criterion for the breaking of the oxide layers and an index for the welding quality. These analytical approaches were implemented with the help of subroutines in the FEM code, in which the results of the simulations were compared and confirmed by the experimental results.