Three-dimensional finite element simulation of connecting rod forging using a new remeshing scheme

A new method of three-dimensional remeshing is proposed for thermo-viscoplastic finite element analysis of connecting rod forging. In the method, the deformed body to be remeshed is divided into a surface-adaptive layer (SAL) and a core region. At the surface layer of hexahedral elements, the arrangement of nodal points is made by normal projection of boundary nodes in order to retard the mesh degeneracy, since the arrangement of boundary nodes can be easily achieved by using the information of the die surface patch. After generating the mesh automatically at the surface-adaptive layer, the core region is automatically meshed by introducing a body-fitted mapping technique. In order to show the effectiveness of the method in the three-dimensional problem, forging of a connecting rod has been simulated as a practical example. The complete simulation of connecting rod forging has been carried out by using the thermo-viscoplastic finite element method and the remeshing scheme. The analysis of transient heat transfer has been carried out for the workpiece by the finite element method, while the boundary element method has been used for the die.