Simufact Forming
Simufact Forming is an established software solution for the simulation of metal forming manufacturing processes. The software covers all essential areas of forming technology: forging, cold forming, sheet metal forming, all major incremental processes and mechanical joining. Simufact Forming provides support in microstructure simulation, calculation of die load, material flow and prediction of material properties in the course of conventional and inductive heat treatment. Furthermore, thermo-mechanical joining methods of pressure welding are also supported.
Highly precise results
Simufact Forming takes into account all areas of forming technology and therefore ensures a highly realistic simulation of the processes. We achieve this high degree of precision by using boundary conditions and representations that have been conceived with the demands of the user in mind. Simufact Forming considers:
- The kinematics of the machine, no matter what kind, and no matter how complex
- The behavior of the material, elasticity, plasticity, hardening and softening, as well as effects that depend on temperature and speed
- The friction and contact between the tooling and the workpiece
- The thermodynamics of the process, workpiece heating, heat transfer into the dies and into the environment, temperature increase due to forming energy, friction heat, etc.
Unique Dual Solver Technology
Mature solver technologies, with the highest precision of reproducing the relevant physical effects, contribute substantially to the high quality of Simufact Forming’s simulation results.
Simufact Forming offers two numerical calculation methods for the simulation that complement each other:
- A finite-volume solver, based on MSC´s explicit Dytran solver, is used for the especially efficient simulation of warm and hot forging processes with significant burr formation
- A finite-elements solver, based on MSC´s implicit Marc solver for nonlinear applications, is used to simulate all process types.
Both solvers have continuously been developed by MSC over the past decades and make it possible to reproduce the complex, nonlinear physics of forming processes with the highest precision. These solver technologies offer the utmost precision in result by the use thermo-mechanical, elasto-plastic element formulation.
Besides the quality of the results, in practice the computation time is another especially relevant quality criteria. Only short computation times make the use of simulation software relevant for daily work. Simufact offers the efficient parallelization of simulation with its additional Performance module: The use of the highly effective methods, domain decomposition method (DDM) for the FE solver and shared memory parallelization (SMP) for FE and FV solvers, allows the computation time to be effectively decreased.
Applications of Simufact Forming
Simufact Forming allows for both two-dimensional (axisymmetric and planar) and three-dimensional simulations on the same graphical user interface. Three-dimensional simulations can use symmetries of the real process (cyclic symmetries as well!) to effectively reduce model size and computation effort. Any kind of transition from two- to three-dimensions, with or without symmetries, is possible.
All temperatures, from room temperature to almost melting point, can be simulated. The simulation always takes into account (even for cold forming processes) dissipation and friction heat, as well as the heat transfer with dies and the environment.
All (metallic) materials common to forming technology can be simulated. The material database shipped with the Simufact Forming Hub already includes:
- Light metals (aluminum, magnesium, titanium)
- Steels (carbonaceous, low and highly alloyed, austenitic and dual phase steels)
- Non-ferrous heavy metals (copper, brass, bronze)
- Zinc alloys
- Heavy metals (lead, cadmium, zirconium, uranium)
- Special alloys (nickel-copper alloys, nickel-chromium alloys and others)
- Super alloys (Inconel, Hastelloy, Waspaloy, Incoloy, Nimonic)
In addition to this, typical tool steels for the characterization of elastic dies are included, too.
The recrystallization behavior of steel and nickel based alloys can be examined with the module Microstructure Matilda.
All forming machines common to forming technology can be simulated. The user can describe special kinematics in table format. Rotating tools are simulated by the Rolling module. Simufact Forming simulates closed loop controlled aggregates such as those used for ring rolling or open die forging with the respective application modules.
Modeling entire process chains
The application module’s functions allow for the simulation of single manufacturing steps. However, the modules can also be combined spanning applications and products in order to connect the various manufacturing steps to entire process chains and to simulate these as a whole:
- Integrated process chain simulation of any forming technology manufacturing sequence by linking and using arbitrary application modules
- Integrated process chain simulation of all forming processes and mechanical joining operations (using the Mechanical Joining application module)
- Process chain simulation by linking forming processes and welding processes together, with the highest result precision based on complete compatibility of solver and material models with Simufact Welding
- The influence of heat treatments on the forming properties of the material can be simulated globally with Simufact Forming
- The Heat Treatment application module offers a more detailed look into local material properties during heat treatments
- Export the simulation results to third-party products, for example for fatigue and crash simulations