An electromagnetic forming analysis modelling using nodal integration axisymmetric thin shell

Abstract A novel modelling approach for the electromagnetic forming process (EMF) is proposed in this paper. In the present work, a stable nodal integration method (SNIM) is used to calculate the electromagnetic field and an axisymmetric thin shell element is firstly employed for mechanical field analysis to improve the computational efficiency. A layered approach is adopted to predict the gradual spread of plasticity in a shell. To solve the coupled electromagnetic-mechanical problem, a mapping rule is developed to transfer the nodal Lorentz force from the electromagnetic field to the mechanical field. Simultaneously, a solid element with the finite element method (FEM) is employed in the mechanical field for comparison to validate the efficiency of the proposed modelling approach; the FEM is customarily adopted in a conventional numerical method of EMF simulation. Several electromagnetic forming examples are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model for EMF problems, and the model is validated by comparing its results with available experimental results in the literature. The numerical results obtained by the proposed model are in good accordance with the experiments and show that the proposed model has much lower computational costs than the conventional one.