A meshless approach, called the rigid-plastic reproducing kernel particle method (RKPM), is presented for three-dimensional (3D) bulk metal forming simulation. The approach is a combination of RKPM with the flow theory of 3D rigid-plastic mechanics. For the treatments of essential boundary conditions and incompressibility constraint, the boundary singular kernel method and the modified penalty method are utilized, respectively. The arc-tangential friction model is employed to treat the contact conditions. The compression of rectangular blocks, a typical 3D upsetting operation, is analyzed for different friction conditions and the numerical results are compared with those obtained using commercial rigid-plastic FEM (finite element method) software Deform3D. As results show, when handling 3D plastic deformations, the proposed approach eliminates the need of expensive meshing and remeshing procedures which are unavoidable in conventional FEM and can provide results that are in good agreement with finite element predictions.
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