Coupled thermo-mechanical analysis of metal-forming processes through a combined finite element boundary element approach

This paper presents a new approach for obtaining the distribution of temperature in the dies during thermo-mechanical numerical analysis of metal forming problems. The proposed approach is based on a solution resulting from the combination of the finite element method with the boundary element method. The finite element method is used to perform the numerical modelling of the thermo-mechanical deformation of the workpiece, taking into account the geometrical and material non-linearities as well as the influence of the temperature distribution on the mechanical behaviour of the material. The boundary element method is applied for computing the distribution of temperatures in the dies. The combination of the two numerical methods is made using the finite element solution of the heat flow exchanged across the die-workpiece interface to define the boundary conditions to be applied on the thermal analysis of the dies. A numerical example of compression under plane-strain conditions is included to show the applicability of the proposed approach. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.