Abstract: A method of sheet forming process simulation which employs elastoplastic incremental FEM involving finite deformation is presented. By applying the elastoplastic finite deformation theory and adopting 8-node shell element, the author realized the numerical simulation of the three-dimensional sheet metal forming. A direct trial-and-error contact algorithm is proposed. This contact algorithm, in which the solving of FEM equation and contact processing are relatively independent, is of good convergence and computation efficiency.

Key words: Contact, Finite element method, Forming, Sheet metal, Simulation