Development of an Algorithm for the accelerated Simulation of Roll Forming Processes

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Groche
• Subject Area: Primary Shaping and Reshaping Technology, Additive Manufacturing
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181983278

Analytical algorithms for the design of continuous forming processes usually assume stationarity. This is especially true for roll forming. The impact of instationary regions (i.e. at the entrance or exit of profiles to the rolling stand) remains unconsidered during process design. In contrast, simulations based on the finite element method provide accurate results for these regions. Up to now, their main disadvantage is a disability to exploit similarities within the process originating from stationarity. Hence, computation time for the simulation of roll forming processes ranges depending on the profile design from several days to several weeks.The approach of this project is to extrapolate the calculated state variables of a process to the next forming step as soon as they become stationary. In doing so, stationary periods of the process with no significant changes of state variables can be skipped and thus the simulation is accelerated.Using simple profiles as test cases the first two years of the project served to determine suitable criteria for the determination of stationarity and to identify parameters with influence on the extend and characteristics of instationary regions of the workpiece. These results led to the development of an automated algorithm, which enhances the FE-simulation in a way that computation time was reduced by approx. 50%. The corresponding results were comparable to those of regular FE-simulations and validated by experiments.The third year of the project aims for an application of the developed algorithm to more complex profiles. An actual profile manufactured by a German profile manufacturer serves as a test case for an evaluation of the generalizability and practical usability of the new method for industrial application.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants