Effect of meshing technique and time discretization size on thickness strain localization during hole-flanging simulation of DP980 sheet at high strain level

In the simulation of the hole-flanging process, many had reported that the effect of mesh sensitivity on strain localizations is insignificant. In this study, mesh layouts including the number of elements along the hole circumference (CD), element sizes in radial directions (R1) and the time discretization (or increment) sizes (T) are varied in the 3D FE simulation of 10-mm hole flanging process of DP980 thin sheets using a conical punch. Its effect on wall thickness distributions and forming load profiles are investigated. Also, the effect of punch surface meshing techniques i.e., analytical and discrete rigid on the distributions is investigated. The simulation results showed that the largest % wall thinning range around the expanded hole edges for punch displacement, S = 15 mm and 20 mm are 25.8–29.2% and 33.3–64.2%, respectively. The load-displacement curves during the continuous hole expansion are not linear for R1 ≥ 0.5 mm. For CD70 & R1 = 0.1 mm, the increase in T values from 0.1 s to 1.0 s has significantly increased the total simulation time by 25% due to the convergence problems. The automatic time increment mode in each step at T = 1.0 s has failed to reduce the total simulation time. The discrete rigid punch surface produces more concentrated wall thickness distributions than the analytical one, leading to higher amount of wall thinning, particularly for high S values. Since the model stiffness reduces with decreasing mesh size. It is recommended to match the simulated peak load with the experimental peak under the instability condition with a smooth hole e.g., a laser cut hole to determine the appropriate meshing method for the mesh sensitivity study. With that, the stiffness of the simulation model is calibrated with the experiment.