LS-DYNA Features for Hot Forming

LS-971 has several features to model the hot forming process. A thick thermal shell formulation for the blank allows modeling a temperature gradient through the thickness. The keyword, *MAT_ADD_THERMAL_EXPANSION, allows calculating thermal strains for all the mechanical material models. A user-defined flag is available to turn off thermal boundary conditions when part surfaces come in contact. A thermal oneway contact algorithm is available to more accurately calculate contact between a die zoned with a CAD type surface mesh when in contact with a uniform meshed blank. Thermal-mechanical contact user defined parameters allow modeling the coefficients of friction as a function of temperature and thermal contact resistance as a function of interface pressure. A new feature models bulk fluid flow through the die cooling passages.