Adaptive remeshing for sheet metal forming

Problems associated with finite element simulation of the forming processes are characterized by large elastoplastic deformations, evolutive contact with friction, geometrical nonlinearities inducing a severe distortion of the computational mesh of the domain. In this case, frequent remeshing of the deformed domain during computation are necessary to obtain an accurate solution and complete the computation until the termination of the numerical simulation process. This Note presents a new adaptive remeshing method of thin sheets for numerical simulation of metal forming processes. The proposed method is based on geometrical criteria and does not use the geometry of the forming tools. It is integrated in a computational environment using the ABAQUS solver. Numerical examples are given to show the efficiency of our approach. (c) 2005 Academie des sciences. Publie par Elsevier SAS. Tous droits reserves.