A Speed-up Method for Numerical Simulations of Multi-strokes Cold Metallic Sheet Forming Processes

The numerical simulation of multi-strokes sheet metal cold forming is very CPU time consuming especially if all relevant physical phenomena are considered. For a single stroke FE simulation, although the process is cold forming, thermo-mechanical coupling should be taken into account. Moreover, friction between the blank and the tools should be correctly modeled. If such complexity is included for the simulation of a single stroke in cold forming, simulating multi-strokes process and maybe multi-steps cold metallic sheet forming, will be extremely CPU time consuming and even unrealistic to be performed. In this work, the authors propose a speed-up method called “jump in strokes method”, which allows a CPU reduction up to 60%. This method was applied for two industrial use cases: the first one was proposed by Philips representing small parts used in shavers and the second one by Opel representing the production of large panels in automotive industry.