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Thermoplastically Formed Cellular Structures

Based on the constitutive flow laws developed in the project, we have developed FEM software for describing the fluid mechanics and rheological aspects of thermoplastic processing of BMG materials. The figure below shows thermoplastically molded honeycomb produced by “extrusion” molding of Vitreloy 1 (left). The “process” parameters for molding the honeycomb were determined initially by computer simulation (right) using “MoldflowTM” Software with a “flow module” developed to describe Vitreloy 1. The results illustrate the use of experimental “flow laws”, computer simulation, and modeling in the development of a “thermoplastic” forming technology for bulk metallic glasses.