Int J Mater Form (2008) Suppl 1:185 188

DOI 10.1007/s12289-008-0022 -3

# Springer/ESAFORM 2008

Integrated Process Simulation and Die-Design in Sheet Metal Forming

M. Tisza1, Zs. Lukcs2, G. Gl3
1

University of Miskolc H-3515 Miskolc-Egyetemvros, Hungary

URL: www.met.uni-miskolc.hu
e-mail: [email protected]

MTA ME Technological Research Group Miskolc H-3515 Miskolc-Egyetemvros, Hungary

URL: www.met.uni-miskolc.hu
e-mail: [email protected]

UM DME Metal Forming Division H-3515 Miskolc-Egyetemvros, Hungary

URL: www.met.uni-miskolc.hu
e-mail: metgalga@ uni-miskolc.hu

ABSTRACT: During the recent 10-15 years, Computer Aided Process Planning and Die Design evolved as
one of the most important engineering tools in sheet metal forming, particularly in the automotive industry.
This emerging role is strongly emphasized by the rapid development of Finite Element Modelling, as well. In
this paper, an integrated process simulation and die design system developed at the University of Miskolc,
Department of Mechanical Engineering will be introduced. The proposed integrated solution has great
practical importance to improve the global competitiveness of sheet metal forming in the very important
segment of industry. The concept to be described in this paper may have specific value both for process
planning and die design engineers.
Key words: Process planning, Die-design, Integrated FEM simulations
1 INTRODUCTION
The global competition requires that manufacturing
industry besides the skill and the experience
accumulated in the shop practice should
increasingly utilise proven techniques of Computer
Aided Engineering including numerical simulation
and modelling for rapid and cost effective process
design and tool manufacturing. The application of
various methods of Computer Aided Engineering
has become one of the most important topics in
manufacturing industries and particularly in the
automotive industry [1].
The application of various CAE techniques
practically should cover the full product development cycle from the conceptual product design
through the process planning and die design up to
the manufacturing phase of the production. CAE
techniques are widely used in sheet metal forming,
for example to predict the formability, to determine
the type and sequences of manufacturing processes
and their parameters, to design forming tools, etc.
[2]. The importance of the application of CAE tools
becoming more and more important as the
manufactured parts are becoming ever increasingly

complex since the sophisticated Computer Aided

Design packages provide practically unlimited
possibilities for stylists to realise their creative
fantasy. The need for the widespread application of
CAE techniques is driven by the demand of global
competitiveness, thus a robust and streamlined
Process and Die Design Engineering (PDDE)
becomes more and more crucial [3].
In this paper, the integration of various CAE
techniques as Knowledge and Simulation Based
Systems (KSBS) will be described through the
example of sheet metal forming practice. The
forming simulation in sheet metal forming
technology [4] and its industrial applications have
greatly impacted the automotive sheet metal product
design, die developments, die construction and
tryout, and production stamping in the past decades.
In todays die and stamping industry, the simulation
for virtual validations of die developments before
production trials is a critical business for lead-time
reduction, cost reduction and quality improvements
[5]. The global competitions drive higher quality
requirements, lower cost, and shorter lead-time. All
these new trends create new challenges for stamping
simulation and to production applications.

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2 SHORT HISTORICAL REVIEW

Sheet metal forming is one of the most widely
applied manufacturing processes in manufacturing
industry. Parts made from sheet metal can provide,
with appropriate design, a high strength to weight
ratio. They are increasingly used from small
electrical components through the automobile
industry up to large aircraft structures for various
purposes. Despite the increasing number of
applications of sheet metal parts, surprisingly little
quantitative design information is available in the
technical literature. Most companies use internal
guidelines for part design, based on experience with
the geometries and materials used in that specific
company [6]. While such design guidelines are
extremely useful and practical, they do not
necessarily consider in detail the fundamental
reasons for selecting a given design. Thus, when a
new part, a new material, or a new process is
introduced the entire set of experience-based design
guidelines must be re-evaluated and modified.
Therefore, it is necessary to develop generic design
methods based on metal forming analysis and on
systematic experimental investigation. This tendency
can be clearly observed in the development of
various knowledge-based systems for designing
sheet metal parts and for process planning of
forming processes [7]. As in many other metal
forming applications, process planning and design of
dies for sheet forming can benefit from a combined
application of knowledge based systems and process
modelling. Recently, many companies are applying
CAD/CAM techniques and knowledge-based expert
systems to improve and partially automate die
design and manufacturing function [8].
Several program packages were elaborated for metal
forming processes at the University of Miskolc at
the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Among
them, a general system for the process planning of
sheet forming processes performed in progressive
dies should be mentioned [9]. In this system, the
process planning and the die-design functions are
integrated into a knowledge-based expert system. It
has a modular structure with well defined tasks of
each module and providing streamlined data and
information flow between the various modules.
It consists of a geometric module for creating,
exporting and importing the object geometry, a
blank module for determining the optimum shape,
size, and nesting of blanks, a technological design

module for designing the process sequence based on

empirical rules and technological parameters, a tool
design module for designing the tools and selecting a
tool of standard size, and an NC/CNC post
processor module for preparing programs for
NC/CNC manufacturing of tool elements.
The forming simulation in sheet metal forming
technology and its industrial applications have
greatly impacted the automotive sheet metal product
design, die developments, die construction and
tryout, and production stamping in the past decades
[10]. It led to significant progresses not only in
fundamental understanding of sheet metal formability, forming mechanics, numerical methods, but also
to the fruitful industrial applications in a wide range
of industrial production [11].
The automotive die and stamping industry benefit
most from the stamping simulations. The technology
advancement speeds up the historical transition in
automotive die development and stamping from a
tryout-based workshop practice to a science-based,
technology-driven engineering solution. The
applications and benefits may be summarized as
follows [12]:
x

x
x
x

Stamping simulation is used as a Design for

Manufacturability (DFM) tool to assess and
validate the product styling surface designs to
ensure a formable sheet product design;
It may be used as a die engineering tool in
stamping die developments.
It may be used as a tryout tool to shorten
production die tryout and thus to significantly
reduce die cost and lead-time.
It may be used as a problem solving tool for
production troubleshooting to reproduce
manufacturing problems, and to provide
solutions for process control improvements.
It may be used as a simulation-based
manufacturing guide to use the simulation output
to drive consistency among die engineering, die
construction, and production stamping.

3 INTEGRATED PROCESS PLANNING AND

DIE-DESIGN IN SHEET METAL FORMING
Due to the global competition and this is
particularly valid for the automotive industry there
is an overall demand to improve the efficiency in
both the process planning and in the die design
phase, as well as to reduce the time and product

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development costs and to shorten the lead times. It

requires the efficient use of simulation techniques
from the earliest stage of product development, to
give feedback from each step to make the necessary
corrections and improvement when it takes the least
cost. This principle is illustrated in the schematic
flow chart of simulation based process planning and
die design as shown in Fig. 1.
OneStep
Process
Simulation Good planning &
Feasibility
Tool
study
design

Product
design

Product
redesign

Failed

In most cases, process planning engineers would like

to know right at the beginning whether the component
can be manufactured with the planned formability
operations. Therefore, after importing the surface
model of the component with the AutoForm input
generator, first a fast feasibility study should be done.
The AutoForm has an extremely well suited module

Incremental Good
Forming
Simulation

Process
or die
redesign

Failed

Die
manufacturing

Prototyping Good
Production
& Tool
try-out

Die
correction

Failed

Fig. 1. Workflow in simulation based process planning and die design

With this approach, stamping defects may be

minimized and even eliminated before the real die
construction stage. If any correction or redesign is
needed, it can be done immediately, with a very
short feedback time, thus it leads to a much
smoother die try-out if necessary at all and to
significantly shorter lead times with less
development costs.
However, even with this approach, there are some
further shortfalls in the die design process, since
most of the simulation programs do not provide die
construction in sufficient details, which can be easily
used in most of the CAD systems to complete the
die design task. This shortage may be overcome by
integrating the CAD and FEM systems through a
special interface module, which can provide a
smooth, continuous and reliable data exchange
between the two important parts of design process.
This solution will be described through the example
of automotive sheet metal components using the
Unigraphics NX (version 4.0) as the CAD system,
and the AutoForm 4.05 as the FEM package,
however, the principles applied here, can be adopted
to other programs as well [13].
The CAD model of the component is created by the
product design engineer in the UG-NX CAD system
as a solid model. However, FEM systems dedicated
for sheet metal forming usually require surface
models. Therefore, before exporting the part model a
surface model should be created. This function is
well-supported in most CAD systems. Depending on
the simulation requirements, even we can decide
which surface (top, middle or bottom) will be
exported into the surface model.

for this purpose: in the so-called One-Step simulation

module, this formability analysis can be done even if
we do not have any or just very few information on the
forming tools. Using this One-Step simulation
procedure, a quick decision can be made if any
modification of the part is required.
Besides the formability validation in this very early
stage of product development, further important possibilities are also offered in this module including the
analysis of slight part modifications, studying alternative material types and grade, or various thicknesses,
material cost estimation and optimization, etc.
Even if the One-Step simulation resulted in good
formability, the final decision on the whole process
realization can be made only after performing a
detailed incremental modeling particularly concerning
the critical forming steps. For this detailed simulation
we need already very detailed knowledge on the tools
and process parameters. Formerly, most die surfaces
were created within general purpose CAD systems,
which is a time consuming procedure and by this way
it is nearly impossible to integrate geometry
modifications into an automated simulation and design
optimization procedure. However, linking the
AutoForm with the Unigraphics CAD system provides
an associative linking. This integration not only greatly
improves the speed and efficiency of process planning
and die design but also significantly improves the data
consistency. With this integration, the active surfaces
of the forming tools can be derived from the imported
surface model of the component utilizing the many
useful possibilities offered by the AF Die-Designer
module to create the binder and addendum surfaces, as
well as the so-called reference surface, which can be

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used to quickly derive the punch and die surfaces.

These surfaces are created using a parameterization
methodology, which provides an order of magnitude
faster die face generation compared to conventional
CAD systems. The applied parameterization makes
also possible to combine surface generation with
optimization algorithms to determine optimum die
surfaces for various process parameters, too. The main
objective of this optimization is to improve the quality
of the product and the reliability (robustness) of the
forming process. In this optimization, the most
important criteria are as follows: 1) crack criteria (i.e.
no cracks should occur); 2) thinning criteria (i.e.
thinning should not exceed a definite value); 3)
wrinkling criteria (i.e. no wrinkles can occur); 4)
stretching criteria (i.e. a minimum overall stretching
should be achieved). These criteria are mainly
evaluated on the basis of the forming limit diagram of
the sheet material. Defining the set of design variables,
the effect of them on the forming process and on the
optimum die surfaces can be studied in an integrated
simulation environment. By this integrated solution,
the influence and sensitivity of process and design
parameters can be easily analysed that leads to
improved process know-how, robust and more
optimum forming processes and dies, together with
shorter development times, better product quality, and
less rejects.

nificant advantages both in the design and in the

manufacturing phase. Sheet metal forming
simulation results today are already reliable and
accurate enough that even tryout tools and the time
consuming tryout processes may be eliminated or at
least significantly reduced. Thus, the integrated
solution described in this paper results in
significantly shorter lead times, better product
quality and as a consequence more cost-effective
design and production.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research work was financially supported by the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences within the National
Science Foundation Grant (OTKA NI-61724), which is
gratefully acknowledged.
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4.
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4 CONCLUSIONS
The application of various methods of computer
aided engineering has a vital and central role in the
recent developments in sheet metal forming
concerning the whole product development cycle.
The application of various methods and techniques
of CAE activities resulted in significant
developments: the formerly trial-and-error based
workshop practice has been continuously
transformed into a science-based and technology
driven engineering solution.
In this paper, an integrated approach for the
application of knowledge based systems and finite
element simulation is introduced. Applying this
knowledge and simulation based concept for the
whole product development cycle from the
conceptual design through the process planning and
die design as an integrated CAE tool provides

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