This award will support a cooperative research program in metallurgy between Dr. Robert Wagoner, Ohio State University and the Centre de Mise en Forme des Materiaux, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines des Paris. The French project leader is Dr. Jean-Loup Chenot. The research will focus on comparison and development of existing finite element programs created in the two laboratories to analyze industrial sheet-forming operations. Improved programs incorporating the findings of the comparison are expected to be the principal product of this cooperation. Basic formulations, programming techniques, and numerical implementations will be compared and contrasted. Specifically, the programs will be compared in three principal areas: accuracy, efficiency of computation time, and stability (or "robustness"). The optimum techniques for each criterion will be identified and retained in order to construct a more practical program for eventual industrial usage. Research at the French laboratory will focus on input/output - intensive testing and development, while the U.S. work will emphasize large-scale computations to take advantage of the special strengths of each site.
