Computer Simulation of Sheet Metal Forming

This paper describes some computer software developed at Michigan Technological University for the simulation of sheet metal forming which is a large-strain plastic deformation process. The approach taken is not the typical incremental solution approach, where one starts from the flat blank and steps are taken (hopefully) toward the final desired geometry, but a fast interactive one where the known surface geometry is mapped directly back to the flat blank. The strains are then calculated from the geometry change, and calculated strains are compared with experimental strains on a forming limit diagram (FLD) to determine formability.

The theory of the deformation process is given in a number of earlier papers. This paper gives example results for several cases of axisymmetric and nonsymmetric geometries.