This study deals with different tool surface description
methods used in the finite element analysis of sheet metal
forming processes. The description of arbitrarily-shaped tool
surfaces using the traditional linear finite elements is compared
with two distinct smooth surface description approaches:
(i) Bézier patches obtained from the ComputerAided
Design model and (ii) smoothing the finite element
mesh using Nagata patches. The contact search algorithm is
presented for each approach, exploiting its special features in
order to ensure an accurate and efficient contact detection. The
influence of the tool modelling accuracy on the numerical
results is analysed using two sheet forming examples, the
unconstrained cylindrical bending and the reverse deep drawing
of a cylindrical cup. Smoothing the contact surfaces with
Nagata patches allows creating more accurate tool models,
both in terms of shape and normal vectors, when compared
with the conventional linear finite element mesh. The computational
efficiency is evaluated in this study through the total
number of increments and the required CPU time. The mesh
refinement in the faceted description approach is not effective
in terms of computational efficiency due to large discontinuities
in the normal vector field across facets, even when
adopting fine meshes.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial
support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
via the projects PTDC/EME-TME/118420/2010 and PEst-C/EME/
UI0285/2013 and by FEDER funds through the program COMPETE –
Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade, under the project
CENTRO-07-0224-FEDER-002001 (MT4MOBI). The first author is
also grateful to the FCT for the PhD grant SFRH/BD/69140/2010.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
