Powder injection molding (PIM) uses the shaping advantage of injection molding but is applicable to metals and ceramics. This process combines a small quantity of polymer with an inorganic powder to form a feedstock that can be molded. After shaping, the polymeric binder is extracted and the powder is sintered, often to near-theoretical densities. According1y, PIM delivers structural materials in a shaping technology previously restricted to polymers. The process overcomes the shape limitations of traditional powder compaction, the costs of machining, the productivity limits of isostatic pressing and slip casting, and the defect and tolerance limitations of conventional casting. Since 1980s when major attention was given to PIM process, it has been widening the application area from small parts with complex shape and tailored properties to structural parts requiring strength and ductility as in automotive, military and medical industries.

In this paper, the rigid-viscoplastic finite element method is employed together with an iteratively force-balancing method to analyze a piercing and trimming process with a spring-attached die in hot former forging. An actual piercing and trimming process with a spring-attached die is investigated in detail and a generalized analysis model is proposed. A multi-stage hot former forging process is simulated under various spring constants. The analyzed results are discussed in order to investigate the effects of spring constants on the metal flow lines and the formed shapes. Then an optimal piercing and trimming process in hot former forging is devised.

Three-dimensional forging analysis becomes an inevitable tool to make design process more reliable and more producible. In this study, in order to make the investigation for three-dimensional forging analysis more conveniently and accurately, a new post processor was developed. For post-processing of multi-stage forging simulation, efficient data structure was proposed and applied by using STL. New file architecture was developed to handle successive and huge data efficiently, common in three-dimensional forging analysis. Since sectioning and flow tracing plays an important role in the investigation of analysis result, we developed an algorithm suitable for 4-node and 10-node tetrahedron. This flow tracing algorithm can trace and reverse-trace flow through remeshing. Developed program shows good performance and functionality. Especially, a big size problem can be handled easily due to proposed data structure and file architecture.

In this study, a web-based system was developed by utilizing finite element method and virtual system designed using Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). The simulation program for axi-symetric sheet forming is developed using finite flement method. The developed system consists of two modules, client module and server module. The client module was developed by using Active-X control. The input data for FEM calculation is transferred to the server module by using communication protocol. Then sever module performs several successive processes: input data generation, forming simulation, conversion of results to VRML format. After that, the results from the simulation can be visualized on the web browser in client computer. Besides, client module offers the capability to control and navigate on virtual forming machine and calculated result. By using this system simulation result can be investigated more realistically in virtual environment including forming machine.

Rotary swaging is one of the incremental forming process which is a chipless metal forming process for the reduction of cross-sections of bars, tubes and wires. In the present work, the rotary swaging machine and dies were designed to investigate the formability of TDS(Tube Drive Shaft) used in automotive industry. The process variables such as the speed of forming, the shape of the formed materials and the reduction of area were also estimated to study experimental analyses of rotary swaging process using the materials of 34Mn5 and S45C. From experimental results, it was found that the process variables affected the quality of TDS in terms of hardness, the precision of products and the surface roughness. The hardness after swaging approved to be Increased with the increase in the reduction of diameter. And it was found that the grain size became smaller and the elongated grains were formed in the axis direction.

The metal forming behavior and defect formation in Ti-6Al-4V tube during hot backward extrusion were investigated. Dynamic material model(DMM) including Ziegler's instability criterion was employed to predict the forming defects such as shear band, inner and/or surface cracks. This approach was coupled to the internal variables generated from FE analysis. The simulation results fur the backward extrusion were compared with the experimental observation. The chilling effect and friction indicated a great influence on the deformation mode of the tube and the formation of surface cracks. The formation of forming defects in the extruded tube was attributed to non-uniform distribution of strain, strain rate and temperatures in the extruded tubes for the given test conditions.

In this paper, an automatic surface construction method based on B-spline surface and scalar field theory is proposed to generate the extrusion die surface of non-symmetric H-and U-shaped sections. The isothermal lines and stream lines designed in the scalar field are introduced to find the control points which are used in constructing B-spline surfaces. Intersected points between the isothermal lines and stream lines are used to construct B-spline surfaces. The inlet and outlet profiles are precisely described with B-spline curves by using the centripetal method for uniform parameterization. The extrusion die surface is generated by using the cubic curve interpolation in the u-and v-directions. A quantitative measure for the control of surface is suggested by introducing the tangential vectors at the inlet and outlet sections. To verify the validity of the proposed method, automatic surface generation is carried out for extrusion die of non-symmetric H-and U-shaped sections.

This paper is concerned with the mechanical property changes of the milli-size products manufactured by forward extrusion processes with square dies. Experiments are carried out with pure aluminum and pure copper billets. Extrusion ratio and knock-out pad are chosen as the important process parameters affecting the changes of mechanical properties such as shear strength and hardness. Shear strength tests with the extruded milli-size pin have shown the strong relation between victors hardness and shear strength in the neck of a stepped pin. As the extrusion ratio increases, the hardness on both the surface and the center line of a pin also increase. It is also noted that the hardness on the surface is a little higher than that on the center. The existence of knock-out pad in extrusion die causes the hardness in the neck of a extruded pin to increase. Finally, the approximated linear relations between shear strength and hardness of a pin are suggested.

The relationships between evolution of microstructure and mechanical properties of porous Al-3Si-2Mg-2Cu alloy after the foaming and various heat treating were investigated. The foamed alloy having various densities were manufactured by powder compact foaming and heat treated. Then compression test was performed with deformation rate of 0.5/s. The ultimate compression strength was not changed after solution heat treatment but the flow curve after ultimate strength showed very smooth and uniform plateau region. This change of flow curve means that the deformation mechanism is altered from brittle fracture to ductile deformation and the energy absorption property of Al foam is dramatically improved. The improvement of energy absorption without any detriment of mechanical properties is due to that the very brittle precipitation like Al-Cu and Al-Mg was uniformly dissolved in Al matrix after solution heat treatment. And various mechanical properties of Al alloy porous material were improved by 40% with aging of $200^{\circ}C$ and 50min. These improvements are ascribe to the various fine precipitates like $\Omega$ and $\theta$'.