Open Access

Janina Siring, Markus Schlayer, Hendrik Wester, Thomas Seifert, Daniel Rosenbusch, Bernd-Arno Behrens

• Hot forging dies are subjected to high cyclic thermo-mechanical loads. In critical areas, the occurring stresses can exceed the material’s yield limit. Additionally, loading at high temperatures leads to thermal softening of the used martensitic materials. These effects can result in an early crack initiation and unexpected failure of the dies, usually described as thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF).Hot forging dies are subjected to high cyclic thermo-mechanical loads. In critical areas, the occurring stresses can exceed the material’s yield limit. Additionally, loading at high temperatures leads to thermal softening of the used martensitic materials. These effects can result in an early crack initiation and unexpected failure of the dies, usually described as thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF). In previous works, a temperature-dependent cyclic plasticity model for the martensitic hot forging tool steel 1.2367 (X38CrMoV5-3) was developed and implemented in the finite element (FE)-software Abaqus. However, in the forging industry, application-specific software is usually used to ensure cost-efficient numerical process design. Therefore, a new implementation for the FE-software Simufact Forming 16.0 is presented in this work. The results are compared and validated with the original implementation by means of a numerical compression test and a cyclic simulation is calculated with Simufact Forming.…