In this paper, a useful die system for warm plate forging of a large axle housing of heavy-duty trucks is presented. A die system composed of material flow guide pin as well as upper die and lower die is proposed to reduce the inherent thickness reduction along the bent corner of the product which deteriorates structural strength and fatigue life in its service. The role of the pin assembled in the upper die is to prevent formation of sharp corner in early forming stage and to supply material in the lower die cavity sufficient enough to thicken the bent corner at the final stroke. The mechanism of the die system is given and its effect on corner thickness of the product is revealed by two-dimensional finite element analysis under plain strain assumption. Three-dimensional finite element solutions are also given to verify validity of the two dimensional approach and to show the mechanics of the die system in detail. The die system has been successfully applied to manufacturing the axle housing of heavy-duty trucks.

A recently developed Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) technique is applied to the detection of the damage locations of bridge structures. The HHT may be used to identify the locations of damages which exhibit nonlinear and non-stationary behavior, since the instantaneous frequency characteristics of the measured signal can be analyzed by the HHT. Numerical simulations were conducted on two bridge systems with damages using controlled excitations with sweeping frequency. Nonlinear plastic model using a gap element is employed to model the behavior of the cracked elements in the numerical simulations. The results indicate that the HHT method can reasonably identify the damage locations based on a limited number of acceleration sensors. Experimental study has been also carried out on a steel frame to confirm the applicability of the HHT to detect a structural connection with loosened bolts. 123(4), 706-711

An artificial body force method is presented to accurately simulate drawing processes in which back pressing is exerted. A rigid-plastic finite element method is applied together with a numerical scheme to eliminate the numerically incurred plastic deformation in rigid or elastic region, which significantly influences simulation results because it eventually changes reduction of area in drawing. Back tension or compression is applied by body force at the rear part of material to obtain numerically stable solution. Two typical examples are shown, a drawing process with back tension applied and a tube drawing with a fixed plug and back pressing applied.

In this paper, three-dimensional finite element analysis of thread rolling process of a 12 point flange head bolt is conducted using a rigid-plastic finite element method based metal forming simulator AFDEX 3D. A whole sequence of cold forming processes of a long shaft bolt composed of four forging stages and final thread rolling process is simulated to reveal the mechanism of thread formation. A mesh density control function is applied near the major plastic deformation region to achieve computational efficiency. It has been shown both numerically and experimentally that longitudinal lengthening or shortening is negligible in thread rolling.