On-Demand Fabrication of Composites with Prescribed Properties by Multifilament Cold Extrusion

Multi-material design is often used to improve performance of products and components. The authors proposed the multi-property design, where a material having desired properties is fabricated on demand, for further optimization. In the multi-property design, after dimensions of the component are fixed, properties required are determined. Then, a component having the desired properties is fabricated. In the previous study, multi-filament cold extrusion was proposed as a process to realize the multi-property design of composite rods. Al, Fe and Cu filaments and a Cu sheath were used to constitute a billet. By changing numbers of filaments of each material, three properties (density, yield strength, electrical resistivity) of extruded rods were controlled. The measured properties were found to be close to the predictions by the mixture rule. However, it was not shown that the process can really produce the rod having the prescribed properties. In this study, a different material combination of Mg/Ti/Ag is used to achieve the same properties as the Al/Fe/Cu rods. By selecting number of filaments of each material, Mg/Ti/Ag composite rods show similar properties as the Al/Fe/Cu rods.