Comparison of two commercial FE-codes for sheet metal forming

There is urgent need to develop new advanced fast and cost-effective mass-production methods for small sheet metal components. Traditionally progressive dies have been designed by using various CAD techniques. Recent results in mass production of small sheet metal parts using progressive dies and a transfer press showed that the tool design time may be cut in up to a half by using 3D finite element simulation of forming. In numerical simulation of sheet metal forming better constitutive models are required to obtain more accurate results, reduce the time for tool design and cut the production costs further. Accurate models are needed to describe the initial yielding, subsequent work hardening and to predict the formability. In this work two commercially available finite element simulation codes, PAM-STAMP and LS-DYNA, were compared in forming of small austenitic stainless steel sheet part for electronic industry. Several constitutive models were used in both codes and the results were compared. Comparisons were made between the same models in each of the codes and also between different models in the same code. Material models ranged from very simple to advanced ones, which took into account anisotropy and both isotropic and kinematic hardening behavior. In order to make a valid comparison we employed similar finite element meshes. The effects of the material models parameters were studied and the results were compared with experiments. The effects of the computational time were also studied.