Rapid Finite Element Analysis of Bulk Metal Forming Process Based on Deformation Theory

The one-step finite element method (FEM), based on plastic deformation theory, has been widely used to simulate sheet metal forming processes, but its application in bulk metal forming simulation has been seldom investigated, because of the complexity involved. Thus, a bulk metal forming process was analyzed using a rapid FEM based on deformation theory. The material was assumed to be rigid-plastic and strain-hardened. The constitutive relationship between stress and total strain was adopted, whereas the incompressible condition was enforced by penalty function. The geometrical non-linearity in large plastic deformation was taken into consideration. Furthermore, the force boundary condition was treated by a simplified equivalent approach, considering the contact history. Based on constraint variational principle, the deformation FEM was proposed. The one-step forward simulation of axisymmetric upsetting process was performed using this method. The results were compared with those obtained by the traditional incremental FEM to verify the feasibility of the proposed method.