Three-dimensional study of extrusion processes by Boundary Element Method.

In this paper we report an implementation of a Boundary Element Method (BEM) dealing with three-dimensional extrusion problems of viscous fluid. Die shapes with and without sharp corners and their influence on the final shape of extrudate have been studied: both shrinkage and swelling of the extrudates relative to the original die shapes have been discovered. The first half of this paper deals with the problem of implementing isoparametric boundary elements. It is followed by results of test problems, and finally the results of extrusion study are presented.