Sheet forming analysis based on improved contact searching algorithm and simple approach for contact force evaluation

Explicit finite element procedures for the simulation of sheet-metal-forming processes are reviewed. Improved techniques for contact searching and contact force evaluation are then proposed and discussed. In the contact searching algorithm, a new contact territory definition is introduced and only node-to-segment contact pairs are defined, which makes the post-contact searching more efficient and easy to implement. For contact force evaluation, a novel approach is employed to make the simulation of sheet forming processes more accurate. The algorithms are implemented and examined via experiments.