ALGORITHMIC FORMULATION AND NUMERICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF COUPLED ELECTROMAGNETIC-INELASTIC CONTINUUM MODELS FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC METAL FORMING

element method Abstract. Electromagnetic metal forming is a contact-free high-speed forming process in which strain rates of more than 103 s−1 are achieved. The deformation of the workpiece is driven by a material body force, the Lorentz force, that results from the interaction of a pulsed magnetic field with eddy currents induced in the workpiece by the magnetic field itself. The purpose of this work is to present a fully-coupled 3D simulation of the process. For the mechanical structure a thermoelastic, viscoplastic, electromagnetic material model is relevant, which is incorporated in a large-deformation dynamic formulation. The evo-lution of the electromagnetic fields is governed by Maxwell’s equations under quasistatic conditions. Their numerical solution in 3D requires particular arrangements due to a reduced regularity at material interfaces. Hence, Nédélec elements are employed. Cou-pling between the thermomechanical and electromagnetic subsystems takes the form of the Lorentz force, the electromotive intensity, and the current geometry of the workpiece. A staggered scheme based on a Lagrangian mesh for the workpiece and an ALE formula-tion for the electromagnetic field is utilized to solve the coupled system, guaranteeing the efficiency and accuracy of the data transfer between the two meshes.