Sheet metal forming and springback simulation by means of a new reduced integration solid-shell finite element technology

The paper deals with the validation of a recently proposed hexahedral solid-shell finite element in the field of sheet metal forming. Working with one integration point in the shell plane and an arbitrary number of integration points in thickness direction, highly non-linear stress states over the sheet thickness can be incorporated in an efficient way. In order to avoid volumetric locking and Poisson thickness locking at the level of integration points the enhanced assumed strain (EAS) concept with only one EAS degree-of-freedom is implemented. A key point of the formulation is the construction of the hourglass stabilization by means of different Taylor expansions. This leads to the advantage that the sensitivity with respect to mesh distortion is noticeably reduced. The hourglass stabilization includes the assumed natural strain (ANS) concept and a kind of B-Bar method. So transverse shear locking and volumetric locking are eliminated. The finite element formulation incorporates a finite strain material model for plastic anisotropy as well as non-linear (Armstrong-Frederick type) kinematic and isotropic hardening. In this context the plastic anisotropy can be modeled by representing the yield surface and the plastic flow rule as functions of so-called structural tensors. The integration of the evolution equations is performed by means of an exponential map exploiting the spectral decomposition. The element formulation and material model have been implemented into the commercial code ABAQUS/Standard by means of the UEL interface for user-defined elements. Using an implicit time integration scheme numerical results for classical deep drawing simulations as well as springback predictions are presented in comparison to experimental measurements. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.