Ultrasonics 53 (2013) 803–807

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Ultrasonics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ultras

Numerical and experimental investigation of upsetting with ultrasonic vibration

of pure copper cone tip
Yanxiong Liu a,b, Qingyou Han b,⇑, Lin Hua a, Clause Xu c
a
Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology of Automotive Parts, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology, Purdue University, 401 North Grant Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
c
Hans Tech, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper is the first time to create a new model for the cone tip upsetting with the ultrasonic vibration,
Received 24 June 2011 namely, during the tip upsetting process, the ultrasonic wave transmits in the specimen at the same time.
Received in revised form 11 October 2012 Firstly, the experiments of the tip upsetting with ultrasonic vibration were conducted and the deformed
Accepted 8 November 2012
samples were obtained. However, a detailed analysis and understanding of the forming mechanism is not
Available online 28 November 2012
possible on the basis of the conventional experimental observations because the ultrasonic vibration pro-
cessing phenomenon occurs at high speed. Therefore, the finite element method was applied to under-
Keywords:
stand the processing mechanism. Abaqus/Explicit was used for the finite element analysis in this
Tip
Upsetting
study. Based on a valid model, the forming process, stress and strain distributions, and effect of the ultra-
Ultrasonic vibration sonic vibration strength on forming process were revealed for the tip upsetting with ultrasonic vibration.
Finite element modeling (FEM) Published by Elsevier B.V.

1. Introduction
In recent years, ultrasonic vibration has been increasingly
applied in the plastic deformation area, such as upsetting, wire
drawing, and sheet metal stamping, because it can greatly change
the lubricant condition, reduce the forming load and increase the
forming limit of the sheet metal. Daud and Huang [1,2] investi-
gated the oscillatory response in ultrasonic compression tests of
cylindrical specimens by experiment and FEM methods. Hung
and Huang [3] also studied the influence of the ultrasonic on hot
ultrasonic upsetting of aluminum alloy. These researches repre-
sented that ultrasonic vibration can reduce the forming load and
increase the billet temperature. Murakawa et al. [4,5] investigated
the application of the ultrasonic vibration in the wire drawing pro-
cess, and they reported that the ultrasonic vibration can reduce the
drawing resistance, improve lubrication and prevent wire break-
age. Jimma et al. [6] applied the ultrasonic vibration to the deep
drawing process, and they declared that ultrasonic vibration deep
drawing can increase the forming limit ration when compared
with the traditional deep drawing process. For all these researches,
the ultrasonic vibration was exerted on the die and no ultrasonic
vibration was propagated in the specimen.
Since the 1960s, many scientists have studied the effect of ultra-
sonic vibration on the material properties when it propagates in
the solid materials for a period of time. Results shown that the
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 765 4945866; fax: +1 765 4946219.
E-mail address: hanq@purdue.edu (Q. Han).
ultrasonic vibration can increase the dislocation density and then
increase the internal friction of the solid materials. Shvidkovshii
et al. [7], Polotskii et al. [8] and Belozerova et al. [9] all found that
the dislocation density linearly increased if the peak stress induced
by the ultrasonic vibration propagation exceeds the materials yield
stress. When the density of the dislocations is high enough, an
alignment of dislocations occurs. It has been observed that a dis-
tinct cellular structure, about 2 lm in size, is formed in ultrasoni-
cally treated aluminum monocrystals after it was exposed to
ultrasonic vibration for only 8 s [10]. With the increasing of dislo-
cation density, the internal friction gradually increases. Studies
made by Puskar [11] illustrated that the internal friction increased
with the increasing of process time and then saturated when the
Armco iron processed by ultrasonic vibration with the frequency
of 22.5 kHz.
It is known that the plastic deformation is the result of the dis-
location motion. Therefore, the plastic deformation will be much
more severe if the ultrasonic vibration injects into the billet during
the metal forming process. Based on this idea, what we have done
in our research is to inject the ultrasonic vibration into the billet
directly and then make the billet to be deformed by upsetting
process.
In this paper, the experiment of pure copper conical tip upset-
ting with ultrasonic vibration was carried out. In order to quantita-
tively analyze the forming process, FEM method was applied in this
research because it is really very difficult to get the real-time mea-
surement of upsetting phenomenon during the application of
ultrasonic vibration in the experiment. A 2D axial symmetric

0041-624X/$ - see front matter Published by Elsevier B.V.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ultras.2012.11.010
804 Y. Liu et al. / Ultrasonics 53 (2013) 803–807
model for the tip upsetting with the ultrasonic vibration was cre-
ated, and the model was verified by comparing the shape of the
part got in the experiment with the result of the FE simulation.
Based on the valid model, the forming process, stress and strain
distributions in the specimen and effect of the ultrasonic vibration
strength on the forming process were analyzed.
2. Experiment
In the experiment, a 20 k ± 500 Hz, 1.5 kW ultrasonic unit was
used as the ultrasonic generator. As shown in Fig. 1, The generator
delivers a sinusoidal wave to the transducer where the electrical
energy is converted to mechanical vibration. A horn connected
with the transducer can make the distribution of the longitudinal
mechanical wave more uniform. The specimen contacted with
the horn tightly, so the initial ultrasonic energy can be directly in-
jected into the specimen. The transducer, horn and specimen, con-
nected together as a whole part, were put on the die plate. Two
fixed plates were used to make the whole part stand vertically.
Pure copper specimens were used in the upsetting tests. For
these specimens, the height H was 145 mm, rod diameter D was
12.7 mm, and cone tip diameter D0 was about 0.5–1 mm. These
specimens with the dimension mentioned above will have a self-
resonant frequency at around 20 kHz, so they can be resonated
when the ultrasonic generator is working.
The tip of the specimen, carrying the total weight of the speci-
men and ultrasonic unit, was in point contact with the die plate
(shown in Fig. 1). Thus a large external compressive stress was
built on the tip, ensuring that the stress at the tip is largely com-
pressive during ultrasonic vibrations. In the experiments, high
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram for the tip upsetting with ultrasonic vibration.
Fig. 2. Parts formed by the ultrasonic vibration upsetting.
intensity ultrasonic energy was injected to the specimen for 60 S,
and then severe plastic deformation was occurred in the tip. The
formed parts are shown in Fig. 2. As shown in this figure, the con-
ical tip has been severely deformed. The sharp end of the cone
specimen looked like an umbrella after the severe plastic deforma-
tion, in the upper right insert shows a copper cone tip before pro-
cessed. By measuring the dimensions of the tip, the diameter of the
tip D0 has been increased from 0.5 mm (the initial cone diameter)
to 5.8 mm and the total height reduction was about 4 mm. In the
next section, the FE method will be used to analyze the whole
deformation process.
3. Simulation of the upsetting with ultrasonic vibration
3.1. FE model
The key problem for this FE model is about how to simulate the
injection of the ultrasonic vibration into the billet. In this study,
one end of the tip was fixed with the horn tightly and the other
side was stress free. In order to simplify the problem, only
one-dimensional elastic wave propagation in a rod was considered.
Two assumptions were made for this one-dimensional wave prop-
agation problem: (1) the transverse section of the rod remains
plane during the propagation of the elastic wave and (2) the stress
acts uniformity over each cross-section. Therefore, in this FE mod-
el, one end of the tip was subjected to a pressure pulse P0p(t) and at
the other end was stress free [12,13]. Here P0 represents the
applied pressure and p(t) is a sinusoidal function in time.
A commercial software, Abaqus/Explicit, was applied for the FE
analyses. Because the specimen is axial symmetry, to simplify the
FE model and improve the computation speed, a 2D axial symme-
try model was created just as shown in Fig. 3. The FE model only
includes three parts: a rigid punch, a specimen, and a die plate.
On the top surface of the specimen, pulse pressure P0p(t) was
applied. The frequency of the ultrasonic vibration used in this
research f = 20 kHz, so the angular frequency x = 2pf = 125,600.
Therefore, P0p(t) = P0 sinxt = P0 sin(125,600t). In order to investi-
gate the effect of the pulse pressure on the upsetting process, P0
was changed from 0 to 27 MPa.
The dimensions of the specimen were the same as those in the
experiment. The material of the specimen was pure copper, and
the elastic modulus E and density q were 119 GPa and 8960 kg/
m3, respectively. The plasticity of the pure copper can be described
by Eq. (1) [14]:
e_ ¼ 2:983½sinð0:0285r Þ3:752 expð205; 800=RTÞ ð1Þ
 Y. Liu et al. / Ultrasonics 53 (2013) 803–807
P0 p(t)
V Rigid punch
Specimen
Die plate
Fig. 3. 2D FE model of the upsetting with ultrasonic vibration.
In this model, the punch and the die plate was modeled as analyt-
ically rigid and was not required to be meshed. Four-node bilinear
quadrilateral plane strain with reduced integration and hourglass
control elements (CPE4R) were applied to model the pure copper.
Two friction models are commonly used in metal forming
processes. One is the constant shear friction model (fs = mk, fs is
friction shear stress, m is friction factor and k is shear strength of
the billet), the other is the Coulomb friction model (fs = lp, l is
coefficient of friction and p is compressive normal pressure. Gener-
ally, if the compressive normal stress at the interface during the
forming process is moderate, the Coulomb friction model
adequately represents the friction model in bulk forming process.
A lot of researches made by Daud also show that the Coulomb fric-
tion model is suitable to represent the friction model during the
ultrasonic vibration compression experiments [2,15]. Therefore,
the frictional behaviors between the specimen and the rigid dies
were all assumed to follow Coulomb friction model, and the fric-
tion coefficient was considered as 0.1 in this research.
Table 1
Upsetting and ultrasonic vibration conditions.
Upsetting speed, V (mm/s) 10
Frequency, f (kHz) 20
p(t) sin(125,600t)
P0 (MPa) 0, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27
Displacement of the rigid punch, S (mm) 4 become larger simultaneously. In the plastic deformation area,
Fig. 4. Comparison of the formed parts between the experiment and FE simulation: (a) conventional upsetting; (b) upsetting with ultrasonic vibration; (c) experiment.
805
The total displacement of the rigid punch is 4 mm, which is the
same that in the experiment. The upsetting speed was defined as
10 mm/s. Upsetting and vibration conditions used in the analysis
are summarized in Table 1.
3.2. Validity of FE analysis
The accuracy of the FE model is very important for the numer-
ical simulation. To verify the validity of the FE model, the shape of
the part formed by the upsetting with ultrasonic vibration is com-
pared with the result of the FE simulation. Fig. 4a shows the
formed part by the conventional upsetting process (P0 = 0). As
the rigid punch moves down, the small tip just becomes large
and the umbrella area is very small which means the deformation
in the cone tip is very small. However, if the ultrasonic vibration is
applied, severe plastic deformation occurred on the cone tip of the
specimen. The sharp end of the cone specimen looked like an
umbrella after the deformation just as shown in Fig. 4b. In this
FE model the pulse pressure P0 = 23 MPa. When the pulse pressure
P0 = 23 MPa the displacement amplitude of the particle vibration at
the bottom surface of the tip is 22.5 lm, which is the same as that
in the experiment. The shape of the part predicted by FE simulation
is in a good agreement with the experiment reality as shown in
Fig. 4c. From Fig. 4b, the diameter of the tip D0 has been increased
to 6.2 mm. Through the comparison of the diameter of the de-
formed tips obtained from the results of FE simulation and the
experiment (shown in Section 2), the relative error of the diameter
is only 6.4%. Therefore, this 2D FE model of upsetting with ultra-
sonic vibration has proven to be reliable experimentally, and fur-
ther investigation can be done using this developed 2D FE model.
Based on the above discussion, we also get that the ultrasonic
vibration has a significant effect on the upsetting process. There-
fore, to reveal the deformation law of the upsetting with ultrasonic
vibration, the detailed analyses are performed in the next section.
3.3. FE results and discussion
3.3.1. Forming process
The forming processes of the conventional upsetting and the
upsetting with ultrasonic vibration are shown in Fig. 5. From this
figure, it is clearly illustrated that the forming processes of the
two deformation styles are totally different. For the two deforma-
tion styles, the deformation areas can both be divided into two
regions. However, for the conventional upsetting (Fig. 5a), when
the height reduction is 1 mm, region I becomes large obviously.
With the increasing of the height reduction, region I and region II
the stress distribution is also very uniform.
806 Y. Liu et al. / Ultrasonics 53 (2013) 803–807

S=1 S=2 S=3 S=4

II
I
(a)

II

I
(b)
Fig. 5. Forming process: (a) conventional upsetting; (b) upsetting with ultrasonic vibration.

For the ultrasonic vibration upsetting (Fig. 5b), when the height
reduction is 1 mm, region I becomes larger. As the reduction in- (a) 25

creases, region I and region II become large, too. But the area of point 0
the region I increases much faster than that of region II, and region 20 point 1
4
I looked like umbrella after severe deformation. We can also get point 2
point 3
that, for this process, the stress distribution in the deformation 15
3 point 4
area is really very non-uniform, due to the superposition of the
PEEQ

stress induced by ultrasonic wave propagation and plastic

10
deformation. 0 1 2

5
3.3.2. Strain distribution
The equivalent plastic strains (PEEQ) changing with the time at
the points from 0 to 4 are presented in Fig. 6a. Points 1 and 3 are 0
the middle points of the line L02 and L04, respectively. The length
of the line L04 is 2 mm. 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
For the point 0 which lies in the center of the cone tip, the strain Time / s
increases lightly before the time of 0.2 s. After that time, the strain
increases sharply and reaches up to 22.5. For point 1, the strain in- (b) 25

creases slowly with the increase of time. But for the point 2, the L02
strain increases just before the time of 0.1 s, after that time, the L04
20
strain almost has no changes, because the edge of the cone tip will
be separated from the die plate from then on. This phenomenon
can also be observed in the experiments. During the ultrasonic 15 L04
PEEQ

vibration upsetting process, the metal flows from the center to

the edge and curves upward as shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen from
L02
this figure that the metal warped and separate from the die plate 10
when it flows away from the center.
For the points of 3 and 4, the strain increases in a fluctuation
way due to the ultrasonic wave propagation in the tip in the axial 5
direction.
After plastic deformation, the strain distributions along the
0
lines of L02 and L04 are presented in Fig. 9b. From this figure, the 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5
strains along the two lines are decreased. Therefore, the maximum Distance / mm
strain area lies in the center of the cone tip.
Fig. 6. Strain distribution: (a) at different points with the time; (b) along the lines
after the plastic deformation.
3.3.3. Effect of the pulse pressure P0
Fig. 8 presents the effect of the pulse pressure on the forming shows that the maximum PEEQ increases from 21.11 to 48.3 as the
process. As the pressure increases from 19 to 27 MPa, the diameter increasing pulse pressure.
of the deformation area increases from 5.08 mm to 6.5 mm, which It is assumed that the particle vibration can be expressed as
means that with the increasing of the pulse pressure, the plastic S = a sin (xt + b), and the velocity of the vibration
deformation of the cone tip becomes much more severe. Fig. 8 also VðtÞ ¼ @s@t
¼ ax cosð xt þ bÞ. Therefore, the maximum die vibration
 Y. Liu et al. / Ultrasonics 53 (2013) 803–807 807

amplitude linearly increased with the increasing pulse pressure.

Of course, the peak velocity of the particle vibration would also
be increased. That is the reason why the increasing pulse pressure
can make the cone tip plastic deformation much more severe.

4. Summary and conclusion

In this paper, the detailed deformation characteristics of upset-

ting with ultrasonic vibration process were analyzed by numerical
simulation and experimental methods. From this study, we arrived
at the following conclusions:

(1) The pure copper cone tips were processed by the upsetting
with ultrasonic vibration process, and severe plastic defor-
mation was occurred on the tip.
Fig. 7. The cross-section of the deformed cone tip. (2) A novel 2D axial symmetry FE model of the upsetting with
ultrasonic vibration was created. Based on this valid FE
model, the forming process, stress and strain distributions,
6.6 and effect of the ultrasonic vibration strength on forming
50
Diameter process were analyzed. The results shows that, the injected
6.4
PEEQ
ultrasonic vibration can make the plastic deformation of
6.2 the billet much more severe due to the superposition of
the extra stress induced by the ultrasonic vibration.
Maximum PEEQ

40
Diameter / mm

6.0

5.8
D Acknowledgements
5.6 30
The authors would like to thank the Self-determined and Inno-
5.4
vative Research Funds of WHUT (No.2010-JL-17) and the National
5.2 Basic Research Program of China (No. 2011CB706605).
20
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