Tooling design and fatigue life evaluation via CAE simulation for metal forming

Cold forming tools are subjected to extremely high pressure. Fatigue is one of the major failure modes on metal forming tools especially on cold forging process. There are many factors influencing the fatigue life such as material properties, interfacial friction, loading, and product geometry etc. and thus it is possible to greatly enhance the tooling life with subtle design change on the product, tooling or process parameters. This paper is aimed to address some key design parameters for tool fatigue life and they should be considered as more in-depth as possible at up-front design stage to eliminate any late design changes and unexpected tooling failures. To realize this goal, an efficient framework for tooling design and fatigue life evaluation which considers different design factors and integrated product, tooling and process design via simulation is proposed. It also provides a platform to systematically integrate different design and engineering tools to support tooling design and design solution evaluation through geometry representation, formability analysis, identification of fatigue failure area and die life prediction. A case study for the tooling design for production of a vehicle wheel disc is presented to demonstrate the implementation of the proposed design and analysis framework.