Predicting the shape of blanked products: a ®nite element approach

Prediction of the properties of products of the blanking process is nowadays still mainly an empirical effort. The lack of fundamental knowledge of the process may cause lengthy process development, and obstructs process innovation. Consequently, a validated numerical model of the process would be of great value. In this paper, an elasto-plastic ®nite element model will be introduced, in which the extremely large deformations which occur are handled by an operator split arbitrary Lagrange±Euler method combined with remeshing. Ductile fracture is incorporated by a discrete crack approach. To demonstrate the possibilities of the procedure, some simulation results are presented. # 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.