Fast thickness prediction and blank design in sheet metal forming based on an enhanced inverse analysis method

Abstract In sheet metal forming process, inverse analysis codes serve a useful purpose at the early product design stage when an approximate analysis is required to determine if the initial concept part can be made and where the failures and defects will occur. In this paper, a robust energy-based 3D mesh mapping algorithm is used to obtain the initial solution and is followed by a reverse deformation method to improve its accuracy. The novel initial solution scheme can consider the material and the process parameters, and thus lead to fewer Newton–Raphson iterations. The actions of the punch, die, blank holder and the drawbead are fully considered. A fast and reliable boundary condition treatment method is implemented to workpiece without binder and addendum information. Contact treatment between punch and die is an essential issue which greatly affects the convergence of Newton–Raphson iterations. A reliable contact treatment based on topological relations of workpiece is proposed to define the force direction between die and punch. Equivalent drawbead forces are also considered with a simplified model. With the improved aspects, the in-house inverse analysis code InverStamp is developed. Application to a square box and a clover-shaped cup are presented with demonstrations of the validity of the code and the efficiency of the proposed modified approaches.