Efficient strategies for the simulation of railway wheel forming

Railway wheels and tyres are manufactured by a multi-stage hot-forming process. This process comprises upsetting, forging, punching, ring rolling and coining operations. The majority of these operations can readily be simulated using available commercial packages. However, the existence of the ring-rolling stage means that existing technology represents only a partial solution to this problem. The ring-rolling process carries a high run time penalty due to lack of constraint and the large number of increments required to complete a simulation. This paper considers the issues and difficulties associated with the finite element simulation of such a process. In particular, factors associated with run time and usability are addressed and the effectiveness of alternative solution methods and remeshing schemes are considered. It is seen that the poor conditioned nature of metal-forming simulation problems severely limits the usefulness of many iterative solution methods. It is found, however, that although the ring-rolling process remains a significant problem in terms of run time, the commercial viability of such activities can be enhanced by the use of solution schemes foundeds on adaptive preconditioning.