Abstract
The die wear is one of the main factors affecting product accuracy and die life in hot forging process. It is desired to analyze die wear by developing wear prediction method combined with FE-simulatin and experiment. Lots of researches have been done into the wear analysis of cold forging die, and the results of those researches were successful, but there have been little applications to hot forging die giving successful results. That is because hot forging process has many factors influencing die wear, and there was not accurate in-process data. In this research, change of die surface hardness by thermal softening during the lifetime was obtained by experiment, and hardness distribution of cross section was measured. This wear analysis was applied to hot forging die, and gave comparatively good results compared with actual wear profile.