Material Selection for an Ultra High Strength Steel Component Based on the Failure Criteria of CrachFEM.

An increasing use of combining more than one process step is noticed for coupling crash simulations with the results of forming operations — mostly by inheriting the forming history like plastic strain and material hardening. Introducing a continuous failure model allows a further benefit of these coupling processes; it sometimes can even be the most attractive result of such a work. In this paper the algorithm CrachFEM for fracture prediction has been used to generate more benefit of the successive forming and crash simulations — especially for ultra high strength steels. The choice and selection of the material grade in combination with the component design can therefore be done far before the prototyping might show an unsuccessful crash result; and in an industrial applicable manner. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]