EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION OF TENSILE STRESS DISTRIBUTION DURING ALUMINIUM WIRE DRAWING

Abstract

Wire drawing, has received a wide range of applications in the production. A wide number of cable applications demand that the cable survive high tensile loading. This works entails experimental and theoretical investigation of tensile stress distribution during aluminium wire drawing. The initial Aluminium rod used in this work was, 9.50mm with density of 2700kg/m3 , young’s modulus of (7x1010 Pa), Poisson’s ratio (0.33), Yield stress in simple tension (21.7 × 106Pa), which was later drawn to different diameter as required and tensile testing was carried out on each required diameter. In this work, tensile stress distribution in the drawing process is determined via experimental and analytical method. A free body equilibrium method is used to obtain the equations that dictate the drawing phenomenon. The result obtained by experiment is compared with improved model and also with other solutions found in the literature about these themes, particularly, with Rogas solutions in slab method case. There is high degree of similarity between the result obtained experimentally and the simulation of improved model but there is a wide gap when compared experimental result with simulation of classical slab method. Thus, the result of the study will be of great benefit to industries that make use of aluminium wire as electrical wiring, cables, spokes for wheels, stringed musical instruments, paper clips and tension-loaded structural components and also automotive sector. This will help them determining the extent of tensile loading that the aluminium wires their working on can withstand before failure can occur.