Abstract
The manufacturing process of sintered components requires the compaction of metal powder in a rigid die, performed for example by a hydraulic powder press. This paper presents a novel, fully coupled model combining a physical hydraulic system model and a Finite-Element-based (FE-based) compaction model to simulate a full press cycle of a powder compaction press. The first model calculates the piston's position by modelling the hydraulic circuit including the valves, hoses, and double-acting cylinders as well as the low-level controller. The piston positions are then passed as input to an FE-based software that implements an adapted multi-surface constitutive model for granular media. This allows to investigate the influence of different trajectories and controllers. In contrast to literature, the fully coupled model allows the simulation of the whole press-cycle instead of the compaction phase alone.