Modeling of electromagnetically formed sheet metal

The intent of this paper is to show that a two-dimensional (2D) arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) finite-difference computer code can accurately predict the dynamics of the electromagnetic sheet metal funning process. The challenging aspect of simulating the deformation of thin metal parts which have been loaded by magnetic forces is solving a highly coupled system of partial differential equations, The material motion and the magnetic physics require two drastically different time steps to maintain numerical stability. The GALE computer code has the ability to solve such challenging problems. This paper highlights the GALE modeling of a number of electromagnetic sheet metal forming operations. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science S.A.