PressSIM - Simulation of the thermal behavior of tools in the hot forming process

The hot forming process is used for the production of ultra high strength steel parts. Especially, in the automotive industry such components are used for crash relevant structures.The strength of these components are mainly governed by a controlled cooling process of the heated component. The characteristic of the cooling process is determined by the surface temperature of the forming tool, which must be known for an optimization of the whole process. In recent time, several simulation tools have been developed for distinct steps of the hot forming process. However, for the simulation of the complete process drastic simplifications have to be made, e.g., the assumption of an equally distributed surface temperature. Up to now no simulation method exists which can replace this assumption. In the project at hand, the heat transfer in the tool will be simulated by the Boundary Element Method (BEM). This methodology is very well suited for linear problems like the heat equation. For the thought application an essential aspect is that the BEM needs only a surface mesh. Hence, complicated tools can much faster meshed compared to volume based meshes. Further, the precision of the BEM is as well improved compared to volume based simulation techniques. Especially, the secondary variables are better approximated, i.e., the heat flux. Unfortunately, the BEM can not be used in its basic form for such an application. To improve the efficiency, fast techniques have to be used like the Fast Multipole Method (FMM or Adaptive Cross Approximation (ACA). The application of these techniques on the instationary heat equation is content of this project. Certainly, the method to be developed has to be validated at experiments on real tools. Hence, aim is not only the computation of academic problems but also to prepare the method for an industrial application.