Improvement of Part or Tooling Life Prediction through Simulation of Whole Manufacturing Process

Abstract Material processing simulation originally started with the prediction of defects created by the forming stages as the main focus. More recently and driven by the quest for vehicle mass reduction we are seeing an emerging interest for enlarging the scope of simulation to “components in-use properties” predictions. This new scope requires a shift from a stage limited simulation focus to one that encapsulate the whole manufacturing process inclusive, of course, of heat treatment. In the first part of this paper we will demonstrate how Simulation can now predict and validate the whole manufacturing process using as an example a bevel gear forging from the initial phases through carburization, quenching and tempering. This idea that the whole process should be used to increase results quality may also be applied in other cases. Typically, when people are interested in tooling life (die,…), a standard approach is to do a stress analysis of the forming stage and eventually compute some abrasive wear but a closer look will show that the accumulation of the blows may have to be taken into account. In case of hot or warm forging, the tooling properties will heavily depend on local die temperature which cannot be obtained only from one simple forming stage simulation.