Experimental substantiation of rigid-plastic finite-element modelling of three-dimensional forming processes

The prime objective of the presently reported work is to assess the accuracy of the finite-element modelling of three-dimensional metal-forming processes, where the block-compression process has been chosen for experimental substantiation of the results of the theoretical model. A three-dimensional rigid-plastic finite-element approach has been used to simulate the metal flow during compression and the results of calculations of the strain distribution are compared with the strains measured during the compression of lead samples. Discrepancies between the calculations and the measurements are discussed in the paper and their sources are analyzed. The conclusion is drawn that the experimental verification of the results of the three-dimensional rigid-plastic finite-element method shows the high accuracy of the latter and confirms its ability to simulate metal-forming processes.