Evaluation of Electromagnetism Capabilities of LS-DYNA: Examples from Alternative Hot Stamping Processes

Hot stamping is one way to produce automotive steel parts of a complex shape with very high mechanical characteristics. In this process heat plays an essential role. To reduced investment costs and for more production flexibility during this heating step, automotive manufacturers look into using alternative heating techniques. The main subject presented in the paper is a way to reduce the heating time and to offer more flexibility when increasing the temperature of the automotive steel blanks, based on Joule effect heating. Two techniques will be explained, inductive and resistive heating, focusing on numerical aspect in order to help manufacturers to reduce the time of setting up such processes. Models using Lagrangian, Thermal and EM solvers will be presented with a comparison to experimental data. In addition to this study related to the hot stamping process, a work on the feasibility to cut a hot steel plate by Lorentz forces will also be discussed.