Computer Simulation of Thermal-Mechanical Processing

Supported by the high-speed SGI engineering workstation and the general MARCTM software, a system is developed to simulate the hot deformation process and the cooling process after deformation in the forging of Cr12 steel on the basis of elastic-plastic FEM techniques with coupled thermal-mechanical-microstructural alteration. In this system, a mathematical model, obtained by plentiful physical simulation experiments on Gleeble 1500 thermomechanical simulator, is introduced to describe the changes in microstructure and properties of steels. This system is proved to be reliable to simulate the thermal field and stress field as well as the microstructure of Cr12 steel during the forging process. It can also be used to optimize and control the forging process.