Efficient solid–shell finite elements for quasi-static and dynamic analyses and their application to sheet metal forming simulation

Abstract

Thin structures are commonly designed and employedin engineering industries to save material, reduce weight and improve the overall performance of products. The finite element (FE) simulation of such thin structural components has become a powerful and useful tool in this field. For the last few decades, much attention and effort have been paid to establish accurate and efficient FE. In this regard, the solid–shell concept proved to be very attractive due to its multiple advantages. Several treatments are additionally applied to the formulation of solid–shell elements to avoid all locking phenomena and to guarantee the accuracy and efficiency during the simulation of thin structures. The current contribution presents a family of prismatic and hexahedral assumed-strain based solid–shell elements, in which an arbitrary number of integration points are distributed along the thickness direction. Both linear and quadratic formulations of the solid–shell family elements are implemented into ABAQUS static/implicit and dynamic/explicit software to model thin 3D problems with only a single layer through the thickness. Twopopular benchmark tests are first conducted, in both static and dynamic analyses, for validation purposes. Then, attention is focused on a complex sheet metal forming process involving large strain,plasticity and contact.