Automatic remeshing and rezoning for the simulation of 3D glass bottle forming with Abaqus/CAE, Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit

To simulate the analysis of glass bottle forming, one has to cope with extreme amounts of deformation in the part being analyzed. This deformation exerts itself in mesh distortion, and in order to complete the analysis some type of remeshing is required. Using existing ALE-techniques for this kind of applications requires a lot of user-intervention and trial-and-error to create a mesh that suits both the initial and final topology of the glass. To reduce the time spent by the user, and to be able to run this kind of analyses automatically based on an arbitrary base-geometry, a completely automated remeshing/rezoning procedure is set-up. In this procedure an Abaqus/Explicit analysis is divided in a number of sub-analyses in a loop together with Abaqus/CAE. Each sub-analysis constructs a new 3D geometry of the glass based upon the deformed mesh, such that the new geometry encompasses the original geometry and contains a sub-topology of the original part. This is achieved using scripting within Abaqus/CAE. Using a map-routine the solution from the previous analysis is then transferred onto the new mesh such that the analysis can be continued. The remeshing procedure is semi-automatic and it can easily be used for other simulations that involve extreme amounts of deformation such as forging. It is successfully been used for the simulation of glass bottle forming and is integrated into a tool which is available for general use.