A finite element analysis of full film lubricated metal forming process

Very few attempts have ever been made to analyze a complex full film lubricated metal forming process numerically, due to the fact that usually the methods of solving the lubrication model are available for axisymmetric and plane strain cases only. Accordingly, a unified procedure of combining the finite element codes of full film lubrication and metal forming has been developed in this paper for either steady or unsteady three-dimensional processes including axisymmetric and plane strain cases. The availability of the method was proved by a published problem and an axisymmetric stretch forming process was therefore adopted as a benchmark. It showed that the precision of simulation can be enhanced substantially by the present method. A better agreement between predicted and experimental film thickness verifies the superiority of the proposed method over the prior studies.