Piercer

This project concerned itself with the production of seamless pipes using a piercer.

Problem: The seam on welded pipes is a definite point of weakness. Applications which require the highest degree of safety therefor require seamless pipes. During the manufacturing process of these pipes, a solid block is pierced with a piercer, and is then further processed into the required dimensions.

Piercers manufactured by PLANSEE which are made of TZM deliver excellent results when applied to high-alloyed steels as well as to the manufacturing of copper pipes, and surpass the performance of conventional piercers made of high-alloyed steels by far.

In this project, the transient temperature progression within the piercer as well as the punch was calculated, that develops during the piercing of pipes. In the process of this calculation the temperatur dependent material property’s of the incorporated Steel and Molybdenum were taken into account. Furthermore, the generated thermal radiation, thermal contact and various other effects were incorporated into the simulation.

A study of variants for example demonstrated the influence of takt time, contact etc. on the temperature load of the components. The point in time at which no further increase in temperature of the tooling is observed and at which the process takes transforms into a quasi-stationary process was also determined.