ECCOMAS 2024

Fluid-Structure-Contact Interaction for Lubricated Rolling

  • Billen, Moritz (RWTH Aachen University)
  • Spenke, Thomas (RWTH Aachen University)
  • Hosters, Norbert (RWTH Aachen University)

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Skin-pass rolling is the final step in manufacturing aluminum sheets. In aluminum rolling, a lubricant is used to avoid adherence of the metal and increase the service life of the roller. The use of the lubricant however influences the surface properties due to trapped lubricant, which takes part in the forming process. From a modelling point of view, skin-pass rolling is a surface-coupled multi-physics problem. The interaction between the lubricant, the deforming aluminum and the direct contact between roller and work piece are non-negligible. Therefore adequate models for fluid-structure-contact interaction are required. In this work, a partitioned approach is developed, which calls the structural and fluid solvers successively. While the roller is assumed to be rigid, an elasto-plastic model is used for the aluminum sheet and the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved for the fluid. Discontinuous prismatic space-time discretizations are used for both the fluid and solid domains [1]. Instabilities due to pockets of enclosed fluids are prevented with a Robin-Neumann coupling scheme between the two solvers [2]. The contact changes the topology of the fluid domain, which is usually resolved by remeshing. The surface-reconstruction virtual region mesh update method offers a more cost efficient approach: An additional layer of inactive elements is included adjacent to the fluid domain [3]. Based on the boundary movement, elements can be activated/deactivated. A conforming boundary is ensured by updating the elements close to the interface. [1] Tezduyar T. E., Behr, M., Mittal, S. and Liou, J. (1992). A new strategy for finite element computations involving moving boundaries and interfaces—The deforming-spatial-domain/space-time procedure: I. The concept and the preliminary numerical tests, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 94(3), 339-351. [2] Spenke, T., Make, M., & Hosters, N. (2023). A Robin-Neumann scheme with quasi-Newton acceleration for partitioned fluid-structure interaction. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 124(4), 979-997. [3] González, F. A., Elgeti, S., & Behr, M. (2023). The surface-reconstruction virtual-region mesh update method for problems with topology changes. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 124(9), 2050-2067.