3-DIMENSIONAL FINITE-ELEMENT SIMULATION OF CONNECTING ROD FORGING USING A NEW REMESHING SCHEME

A new method of three-dimensional remeshing is proposed for thermo-vis coplastic finite element analysis of connecting rod forging. In the me thod, the deformed body to be remeshed is divided into a surface-adapt ive layer (SAL) and a core region. At the surface layer of hexahedral elements, the arrangement of nodal points is made by normal projection of boundary nodes in order to retard the mesh degeneracy, since the a rrangement of boundary nodes can be easily achieved by using the infor mation of the die surface patch. After generating the mesh automatical ly at the surface-adaptive layer, the core region is automatically mes hed by introducing a body-fitted mapping technique. In order to show t he effectiveness of the method in the three-dimensional problem, forgi ng of a connecting rod has been simulated as a practical example. The complete simulation of connecting rod forging has been carried out by using the thermo-viscoplastic finite element method and the remeshing scheme. The analysis of transient heat transfer has been carried out f or the workpiece by the finite element method, while the boundary elem ent method has been used for the die.