The Cut-Expand-Method for the FE-simulation of steady-state rolling processes

The conventional FE-simulation of multi-step rolling processes leads to several problems. Besides the permanent need for remeshing, major reasons for developing a new method are the transient effects at the beginning and the end of each forming step. Usually these zones of the work piece are of minor interest for the process evaluation. In conventional FE-simulations of rolling processes the transient zones grow with each forming step. The growth of these zones with the number of forming steps influences the stability and the duration of the simulations. A new approach eliminates the increase of the transient effects and reduces the necessary computational time for the investigation of the steady-state behaviour of rolling processes. The linear flow splitting process 1, 2 is used for the demonstration of this new method.