Abstract The industrial aim for shorter lead times in the development process for new products has encouraged a fast development of finite-element procedures for the simulation of sheet-metal forming. These procedures can shorten the design stage for new sheet-forming tools and the try-out period. In order to reach these goals robust calculation procedures and extensive verification of results are required. This paper presents a detailed validation of one promising type of finite-element code, namely the explicit code DYNA3D. Experiments for verification were performed on a zinc-coated sheet steel with a hot-dip galvanized coating. Stretch forming and deep drawing of cylindrical cups were performed. Rectangular boxes were formed from rectangular blanks and blanks with cut corners. Dies both with and without draw beads were used. Punch forces, flange draw-in and strain distributions were measured. The pressings with cylindrical shape were used to determine coefficients of friction with a fitting procedure based on comparison of data from pressings and from the DYNA3D calculations. These tribological data and constitutive data of the steels were used in the simulation of pressings of rectangular boxes. The calculations with DYNA3D gave a good description of flange draw-in and the strain distributions in the pressings. In most of the cases studied the punch-force curves were well reproduced. It is concluded that the present code is well suited for the simulation of sheet-forming operations.