Solid Shell Element and its Application in Roll Forming Simulation

Solid shell element models which possess only translational degrees of freedom and are applicable to thin structure analyses has drawn much attention in recent years and presented good prospect in sheet metal forming. In this study, a solid shell element model is introduced into the dynamic explicit elastic-plastic finite element method. The plane stress constitutive relation is assumed to relieve the thickness locking and the selected reduced integration method is used to overcome volumetric locking. The assumed natural strain method is adopted to resolve shear locking and trapezoidal locking problem. Two benchmark examples and a stage of roll forming process are calculated, and the calculating results are compared with those by solid element model, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the element.