Adaptive remeshing for sheet metal forming in large plastic deformations with damage

This paper presents an adaptive remeshing scheme to solve problems, where large plastic deformations with ductile damage are possible, in metal forming processes. During simulations of metal forming processes, severe mesh distortion occurs and it is then necessary to remesh the part to carry out the finite element analysis. The proposed remeshing method is based on refinement and coarsening techniques and avoids entirely remeshing the piece. Its advantages are the simplicity and the rapidity. This paper presents the necessary steps to remesh the damage structure: refinement of the elements in the boundary of the domain, adaptive refinement and coarsening of elements according to physical and geometrical criteria. In addition, the macroscopic crack propagation is modelled by removing the fully damaged elements. Numerical examples show the efficiency of the proposed method.