Remeshing for metal forming simulations-Part II: Three-dimensional hexahedral mesh generation

In the present study, a hexahedral mesh generator was developed for remeshing in three‐dimensional metal forming simulations. It is based on the master grid approach and octree‐based refinement scheme to generate uniformly sized or locally refined hexahedral mesh system. In particular, for refined hexahedral mesh generation, the modified Laplacian mesh smoothing scheme mentioned in the two‐dimensional study (Part I) was used to improve the mesh quality while also minimizing the loss of element size conditions. In order to investigate the applicability and effectiveness of the developed hexahedral mesh generator, several three‐dimensional metal forming simulations were carried out using uniformly sized hexahedral mesh systems. Also, a comparative study of indentation analyses was conducted to check the computational efficiency of locally refined hexahedral mesh systems. In particular, for specification of refinement conditions, distributions of effective strain‐rate gradient and posteriori error values based on a Z2 error estimator were used. From this study, it is construed that the developed hexahedral mesh generator can be effectively used for three‐dimensional metal forming simulations. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.