Process and die design for multi-step forming of round parts from sheet metal

Designing process sequences for deep drawing of round cups has traditionally been a trial and error process. This paper describes a Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) system for designing process sequences and the corresponding tooling that is currently being developed at the Engineering Research Center for Net Shape Manufacturing (ERC/NSM). This system will help designers in developing and evaluating process sequences and in predicting possible problems before the manufacturing of tools and the production of parts. This will lead to substantial savings in time and costs. The CAE system consists of a rule-based design module to generate the process sequences and an analysis module based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) to predict potential problems by simulating the forming processes. This paper discusses the implementation of the rules to design process sequences as well as some aspects of the numerical simulation of the forming processes.