Phase Forging

Cold forging is the most efficient technology for high-volume production of near-net-shape and ready-to-assemble components for transport, mechanical, electrical and other applications. With this highly competitive process, success depends on the ability to efficiently compute simultaneous interacting deflections in a combined workpiece-die-press system, and to optimize part precision and tooling system service life by taking into account all relevant process parameters.

Smooth contact elements and large-strain plasticity elements were used to simulate this example two-phase forging process. Implementation of the complex scenario involved is a difficult task for most commercial finite element systems. The flexibility of data manipulations in Mathematica and the structure of AceFEM, where all the data can be accessed and changed directly from Mathematica, is an efficient combination for implementing such complex scenarios.

This example is provided by the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Warsaw, Poland, and the Centre for Computational Continuum Mechanics, Ljubljana, Slovenia.