STUDY ON REAL-TIME FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS SIMULATION AS A VISUALIZATION AND INTERACTION TOOL FOR SHEET METAL FORMING PROCESSES

Modern sheet metal forming industries rely on the application of high-technology virtual simulations such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to become economically competitive, improve productivity, and ensure sustainability. However, the traditional way of using FEA in sheet metal forming industries is to perform virtual studies at a completely offline location, which often leads to erroneous results and massive wastage of resources, time, and money. Real-time FEA is an emerging technique that generates real-time solutions in response to actual load variations. This research aims to integrate real-time FEA results with the corresponding real-world sheet metal forming process to facilitate the manufacturing operations to be economically competitive with higher efficiencies and improved sustainability. The proposed study will be able to enhance the real-time decision-making capability of the machine operator. The preliminary results show that the use of real-time FEA could significantly improve the sheet metal forming processes.