On the Influence of Mesh Size during Finite Element Simulation of Equal Channel Angular Pressing

Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) has attracted a lot of interest due to its ability for fabrication of bulk ultrafine-grained materials. With the development of computer skills, the computer-aided methods become very important and useful in understanding the deformation mechanism of ECAP. In this study, the influence of mesh size during finite element simulations of ECAP has been examined based on the plane strain condition assumption. Four different meshes have been compared and these results indicate that Mesh 600 and Mesh 2400 fail to capture the deformation features of ECAP accurately. Large corner gaps develop in these two cases and the simulated strains are smaller than the analytical calculations. Similar results have been obtained between Mesh 6369 and Mesh 12000 and the predicted features of plastic deformation and texture evolution are consistent with the experimental results.