Rigid-plastic finite element analysis of sheet metal forming processes using continuous contact treatment and membrane elements incorporating bending effects

Abstract

An improved method of contact treatment is developed in which both the FEM (finite element method) mesh and the tool surfaces are described with parametric patches which have C 1 continuity or more. The FEM mesh at the current configuration is globally converted into smooth surface patches of net form. A continuous sheet surface normal scheme is devised by using the globally smoothed mesh surface. A robust and efficient contact search algorithm is also developed in connection with the proposed continuous contact treatment. As an improved version of conventional membrane element, the BEAM (abbreviated from Bending Energy Augmented Membrane) element is newly developed based on node spring. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed continuous contact treatment and BEAM element, deep drawing processes of complicated parts including actual auto-body panel are analysed. Comparisons with the available experiment and analysis show that the proposed continuous contact treatment in connection with BEAM elements can be effectively applied to the analysis of sheet metal forming processes for arbitrarily curved parts with deformation regions in which the bending effect must be taken into account.