Development of a simplified approach of contact for incremental sheet forming

This paper deal with a simplified approach for the contact management between the tool and the sheet in incremental sheet metal forming process. The general principle of this approached is to imposed displacement of the nodes in contact with the tool at a given position. After a description of this method, some numerical aspects of this algorithm are investigated. Applied a pressure contact on the elements of the contact zone have few influence of the results (deformed shape and thickness) but reduce the computational time of the simulation. The size of tool displacement is also investigated. Using increments of the tool diameter give a good accuracy of the thickness and of the geometry. Large increments do not affect the predicted geometry, but only the minimal thickness of the forming component is accurate. This new algorithm gives a good reduction of the computational time compared with a standard contact algorithm (from a ratio of 0.75 to 0.18, depending of the increment size).