Quadrilateral finite-element generation and mesh quality control for metal forming simulation

Abstract

An improved looping method for quadrilateral finite element generation, effective especially for automatic metal forming simulation, was presented in this paper. A new splitting criterion to improve the conventional looping method, an artificial boundary scheme to reduce mesh transition regions and an optimal nodal placement scheme to enhance local and global mesh quality were introduced in the standpoint of metal forming engineering. Various application examples were given, which show versatility and applicability of the presented approaches and the developed mesh generator. Application examples including automatic computer simulation of a forging process showed that the presented approaches are powerful for metal forming simulation. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.