A Three-Dimensional Rigid-Plastic Finite Element Analysis of Spur Gear Forging Using the Modular Remeshing Technique

Abstract

In the three-dimensional finite element simulation of forging processes, the design of meshes in initial billets, as well as in intermediate remeshing stages, plays the most important role because of the fast mesh degeneracy. In the present paper, a new systematic approach of three-dimensional remeshing, so called modular remeshing, is proposed for the finite element analysis of forging. In order to show the effectiveness of the method, forging of a spur gear is simulated by using several basic modules by the general rigid-plastic finite element code (1, 2, 3) developed for cold forging. The computational results show that the computation can be effectively carried out using the proposed concept of modular remeshing and it can be extended to other more complicated forging processes.