DEVELOPMENT OF AN EXPERIMENTAL – ANALYTICAL PROCEDURE TO DETERMINE THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF SEMI – SOLID ALUMINUM ALLOYS AT THIXO TEMPERATURES

The mechanical properties of semi – solid aluminum alloys were determined by means of conducted compression experiments at thixo temperatures and FEM simu-lation of the experiment process. The registered force versus displacement signal was used for the determination of the mechanical properties in the form of stress – strain curves, through the comparison of the analytical force – displacement curve, extracted from the FEM simulation of the compression process using the software DEFORM 2D©, with the experimental one. The investigation of the influence of the temperature and shear rate showed that increasing both variables lead to the deterio-ration of the mechanical and reological properties. The determined mechanical and reological properties were used for the simulation of the casting process of an industrial product (aluminum base of an office work chair), using two different commercial FEM software packages, DEFORM 3D©, which is mainly used for the simulation of processes involving large plastic deformation, and ProCAST©, targeted for the simulation of casting processes. The usability of the ex-tracted mechanical properties in properly describing the material flow during casting processes was verified through the direct comparison of the simulation results ob-tained from both FEM software packages