Abstract
Designing material characteristics by grain refinement using Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) is an attractive way to create outstanding material properties. This paper presents a unique method which combines SPD and impact extrusion. The extrusion die is designed to create additional material deformation to a defined depth, resulting in a gradient from ultra-fine grained to coarse grained microstructure. Due to the large gradient the method is called gradation extrusion. The paper presents a new analytical calculation method and a numerical evaluation of the strain, showing the relationship between tool design and achievable effects and provides initial experimental results.