Sb. Petersen et al., A METAL-FORMING APPROACH TO AUTOMATIC-GENERATION OF GRADED INITIAL QUADRILATERAL FINITE-ELEMENT MESHES, Engineering computations, 15(5), 1998, pp. 577
This paper presents an algorithm for automatic generation of graded in
itial quadrilateral meshes targeted for the finite element analysis of
metal-forming processes. Meshing the domain geometry deals with a uni
verse of shapes, and the procedure therefore takes into account the in
itial geometry of the billet. A grid-based approach is utilised for ge
nerating an initial coarse mesh with well-shaped (internal) elements,
and in cases where non-rectangular shapes are to be discretized, linki
ng with the boundary is performed on the basis of constrained Delaunay
triangulation. By analysing the contact situation between dies and me
sh, an attempt is made to identify regions where plastic deformation i
s likely to be concentrated during the early stages of processing, and
accordingly refinement of the mesh is performed locally by elemental
subdivision. Simulation examples for closed-die forging, forward rod a
nd backward can extrusion substantiate the feasibility of this approac
h in terms of lowering the overall calculation error and limiting the
interference between mesh and die.