High-order time integration applied to metal powder plasticity

The present article treats two objectives. In the first investigation attention is focused on the application of time-adaptive finite elements formulated on the basis of a high-order time integration procedure on a constitutive model for compressible finite strain viscoplasticity for metal powder. In this connection, it has to be emphasized that the integration procedure is not only applied to the evolution equations on Gauss-point level but on the total system of differential–algebraic equations resulting from the application of the vertical line method on the quasi-static finite element equations. The specific application emerges from the field of metal powder compaction. Particular studies are carried out using stiffly accurate, diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta methods in combination with the Multilevel-Newton algorithm for solving the DAE-system. In this respect, the effort vs. accuracy behavior is investigated which is also related to order reduction known in elastoplasticity. The second topic treats the local stress algorithm for taking into account the yield function based finite strain viscoplasticity model, where the classical Newton–Raphson method fails. This is the reason why most constitutive models of powder materials are implemented into explicit finite element codes. Thus, the proposed investigations compare different methods in view of a stable and efficient integration process in implicit finite element formulations.