Koutaiba Kassem, K. Srivastava – GNS

at MpCCI UF 2008

Large-scale manufacturers such as car makers are faced with extremely fierce competition in international markets today. More than any other domain, the automotive industry must focus its efforts on outstanding product quality, early time-to-market and low product costs. In addition, car manufacturers are under the obligation to comply with increasingly severe legal requirements in terms of, for example, environmental compatibility and safety. The adoption of virtual techniques in an early stage of product development, like crash and forming simulation, has become nowadays an indispensable tool in the metal-working industry. With the focus on sheet metal forming processes like deep drawing, the requirements on simulation software are steadily increasing: on one hand, more sophisticated material models, element and contact formulations are necessary to obtain accurate results of complex phenomena like springback prediction or surface defects detection, while on the other hand, large-scale models accounting for effects like the elastic deformation and wear of the forming tools or even the temperature distribution during the forming process, are necessary to ensure a reliable and cost-effective manufacturing process.