Application of the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian formulation to the numerical simulation of cold roll forming process

In this paper, the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian formalism is used to compute the steady state of a 3D U-shaped cold roll forming process. Compared to the Lagrangian case, this method allows to keep a refined mesh near the tools, thus allowing accurate contact prediction all along the computation with a limited number of elements. Mesh can also be kept refined in the bending zone, thus leading to accurate representation of the sheet with a limited computational time. The main problem of this kind of simulation lies in the rezoning of the nodes on the free surfaces of the sheet. A modified iterative isoparametric smoother is used to manage this geometrically complex and CPU expensive task.