AutoForm-Thermo Plug‑In

AutoForm-Thermo Plug‑In is used in connection with AutoForm-FormingSolver to consider general thermal effects in cold, warm and hot forming simulations. With this plug‑In, you can take thermal behavior into account while examining part and process feasibility, optimizing forming and production process parameters and conducting final validation analyses as long as there are no phase transformation effects to be considered. Taking temperature into account leads to increased accuracy of simulation results for both warm and hot forming of many automotive light metals such as aluminum alloys. Furthermore, you can also analyze the effects of real forming tool temperatures as well as temperature effects on the tribological system, and subsequently on the forming results.

AutoForm-Thermo Plug‑In enables AutoForm-FormingSolver to handle coupled solutions of the mechanical and thermal finite element equations for all of the warm and hot forming process operations, including heating, transport and cooling. You can define tool surface temperatures to be constant or evenly distributed, mapped as temperature fields obtained from external computations or internally computed as the result of tool temperature control using cooling channels.

You can use AutoForm-Thermo Plug‑In together with AutoForm-Sigma to analyze the impact of design and noise variables on hot forming processes. Moreover, when used with TriboForm Solver Plug‑In, you can simulate the effect of temperature on the tribology system.

With AutoForm-PhaseChange Plug‑In, the functionality of AutoForm-FormingSolver and AutoForm-Thermo Plug‑In can be further extended into the area of phase transformation simulation of Manganese-Boron Steels.

Benefits

Realistic simulation of thermal effects in sheet metal forming processes (cold, warm and hot forming)
More realistic modelling of temperature dependent friction behavior in conjunction with the TriboForm Plug‑In
Simulation of the quenching process for Manganese-Boron Steels using AutoForm-PhaseChange Plug‑In

Key Features

Rapid simulation of thermal behavior in sheet metal forming processes
Fully coupled thermo-mechanical simulations without consideration of phase dependent material properties
Graphic display of simulation results, i.e. temperature changes and distribution in part and tool, final part properties such as thickness distribution, strain-stress distribution and springback