Finite Element Analysis of Steady State Manufacturing Process in an Eulerian Frame

In the past three decades, extensive research has focused on the application of numerical methods for the computation of residual stress. Most commonly, the simulations involved performing coupled thermal mechanical finite element analyses in Lagrangian reference frames assuming rate independent elasto-plastic material response. Lagrangian analysis may become computationally demanding in three-dimensional models when several thousand time increments are needed for simulation of the manufacturing processes. Some manufacturing processes, such as welding, rolling, cutting, and extrusion, can be treated as quasi-steady state in an Eulerian frame. The Eulerian analysis solves the problem at once rather than taking several time increments as in the Lagrangian. The objective of this work is to investigate the feasibility of an Eulerian implementation of Anand’s model in modeling residual stress of manufacture processes. Such an implementation has the potential to reduce computational cost in modeling manufacture processes. An Eulerian reference frame is also more advantageous in modeling processes with large deformation such as friction stir welding, rolling and extrusion since excessive mesh distortion and re-meshing are no issues as the case of Lagrangian models (Int. J. Mater. Form., 2008, 1, 1287–1290).