A volume-based mapping method for parameter estimation in multi-stage material processing

Current emphasis on affordability and sustainability of manufacturing systems creates a need for new material process design methods that consider alternative materials and processes. The advent of low-cost, high-performance computing has enabled a generic acceptance of powerful computational tools such as finite element analysis (FEA) for analysis purposes. The large number of computations required by a high accuracy FEA simulation makes an optimization-based design technique that is built around FEA simulations almost prohibitive. Alternative simpler techniques are needed at the initial design stages in order to predict the most important characteristics of the material behavior during processing in a small fraction of time taken by an FEA run. The technique presented in this paper describes a volume-based mapping method for the parameter estimation in forging operations. The method can produce the deformed geometry and important process parameters such as strain and strain rate in matter of seconds. The results have been compared with a widely used FEA tool and the predictions are found to be in good agreement with FEA results.