Zoning Method for Efficient Material Properties Calculation

When material models are enhanced by calculating additional effects such as microstructure evolution for every Gauss point and time step, considerable numerical effort must be expected. Interfacing third-party software from within user defined material subroutines can even be more time consuming. In many applications, however, considerable parts of the material domain give similar results. Strain, strain rate and temperature are the most important properties for the material behavior. During the thermo-mechanical processing such as rolling and especially extrusion, material deformation is concentrated in small areas. This means that strain, strain rate and thus temperature remain almost constant for large parts of the material during most of the simulation runtime.