THE ART of SHEET FORMING SIMULATION TECHNOLOGY in JAPAN

;Recently the sheet forming simulation technology revealed great progress in the sense of practical application in the automotive, electric/electronics and aviation/space industries. The goal of sheet forming simulation is to embedded in the design engineering system which is consisted by the analysis and synthesis modules. This design simulation system predicts the slackness of sheet and estimate the formability, and search the optimum material/forming/structure conditions. This OVER-ALL OPTIMUM DESIGN can be classified as follow; 1. ANALYZING PROCEDURE: Numerical simulation based on nonlinear theories -geometry, material and friction nonlinearities- 2. OPTIMIZATION PROCEDURE: Optimum design based on mathematical programing and AI technologies, those are implemented in CAD/CAM/CAE System - Concurrent Engineering System-. In this paper, four subjects will be discussed; (1) State of arts of computer simulation technologies in Japan. (2)History of sheet forming simulation. (3) Benchmark problems. (4) Future technology in the sheet forming simulation.ation.