Planar Symmetric Finite Element Analysis of Evolution of Longitudinal Surface Defects in Wire Drawing

Abstract

A three-dimensional finite element (FE) analysis of wire drawing process with a groove-type longitudinal surface defect was conducted to investigate deformation behavior of the surface defect by introducing various planar symmetric models to determine an efficient planar symmetric FE model to improve computational efficiency. To obtain validity of the numerical simulation, the FE result with a half symmetric model was compared to the experimental data obtained from optical microscopy in terms of evolution of a cross-sectional shape of the groove-type longitudinal surface defect during the multi-pass wire drawing with commercially available medium carbon steel. Depending on the relative size of the surface defect to the diameter of the wire, different solution accuracy was obtained and the 30° planar symmetric FE model was a reasonable approximation to guarantee the solution accuracy by reducing the computation time for a shallow surface defect. This approach was further applied to investigate evolution of triangular-, cubic-, and square-type longitudinal surface defects in the single-pass wire drawing. The current numerical approach can be useful in efficiently assessing evolution of the longitudinal surface defects in the wire drawing for practical use.