RIGID-PLASTIC FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD FOR ANALYSIS OF 3-DIMENSIONAL ROLLING THAT REQUIRES SMALL MEMORY CAPACITY

At present, caliber rolling is analyzed using the three-dimensional ri gid-plastic finite-element method. In this paper, a new method of anal ysis which requires less memory capacity than the conventional method is proposed. In the conventional method, the shape of the whole region is updated after the functional of the region is minimized, whereas i n the proposed method, the shape of part of the region (large region) is updated after the functional of the large region is minimized. The load, torque, material shape, hydrostatic stress and equivalent strain rate obtained using the proposed method agree with those obtained usi ng the conventional method within the allowable range of convergent er ror. Also, although the computation time for the proposed method is ra ther long compared with that for the conventional method, the memory c apacity required for the proposed method is small compared with that f or the conventional method. Finally, analysis of various types of cali ber rolling in which the number of finite elements in the large region coincides with that in the whole region in analysis using the convent ional method is carried out and reasonable stress and strain distribut ions are obtained. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.