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FORGE¢ç NxT FOR AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
With the new regulations, the automotive industry has to constantly innovate to reduce product weight, fuel consumption and to improve product performance. In forging simulation, FORGE¢ç NxT is a recognized leader with 30 years of providing best-in-class solution used by world¡¯s leading forged component producers serving the automotive industry. It is already embedded in the design process to produce parts such as connecting rods, crankshafts, camshafts, drive shafts, pinions, steering knuckles, suspension arms and vehicle wheels.
With many cutting-edge features, FORGE¢ç NxT is the best solution to design first-time-right components, to cut real scale tryouts, to save material costs and energy costs, to extend die life, to shorten design phase and reduce time to market.
"For the Hirschvogel Automotive Group not only technical but also economic advantages result from the application of the FORGE¢ç software. Lately, these have been approved via monetarily assessable as well as non-monetarily assessable criteria. Furthermore the good relationship between Hirschvogel Automotive Group and Transvalor S.A. - which has evolved over more than 10 years of collaboration - is remarkable."

Jochen Heizmann
Research & Development
Hirschvogel Umformtechnik GmbH
Denklingen, Germany
To download the FORGE¢ç Automotive presentation, click here.

First time right design

FORGE¢ç NxT provides a fast insight into your product and the whole forging sequence can be validated thanks to accurate prediction of final geometry, folds/laps, grain flow, underfilling, excess material

FORGE¢ç NxT also offers unique tracking capability. Easy to set up, it allows localizing throughout the whole forging sequence any underskin defects, shear surface, central looseness from casting up to the final geometry. Reverse tracking is also possible to localize, as an example, the final flash in the initial billet.
The shear surface of the initial billet - a cylindrical bar - of a connecting rod can be tracked
during the whole forming process : from reducer rolling, edger and up to blocker and finisher and localized in the final shape.
This is illustrated in the video above.

Equipment choice and die-life extension

FORGE¢ç NxT provides accurate prediction of press load, making it possible to validate the choice of appropriate workshop equipment.
Forging load prediction in the finisher stage.

Materials savings

TRANSVALOR has been a pioneer in the field of fully automatic optimization aimed at reducing the mass of the initial billet. For the automotive industry with high volumes of production, this represents a major benefit. The example below was provided by one of our customer. A 9% saving in the mass if the initial rectangular-cross-section billet was reached. A significant saving of material when multiplied by the thousands of parts produced.
Automatic reduction of 9% of the initial billet weight of a commercial vehicle sector shaft.
Flash pattern before (in red) and after optimization (in blue).
Another example of materials savings from ARAI click here.

Shortened design phase

Design phase can be shortened thanks to FORGE¢ç NxT unmatched parallel computing capability. Highest speed up is ensured in the computation time with all the steps being performed in parallel: thermo-mechanical solving, remeshing and mapping.
Speed-up chart for a 3 stage connecting rod forging simulation
Use of embedded innovative numerical techniques into FORGE¢ç NxT makes it possible to design automotive components produced by incremental forging. This type of process is very CPU time demanding. With this new bi-mesh technology, computation time is significantly reduced, allowing parts like hollow splined shaft, produced by rotary swaging, to be designed with FORGE¢ç NxT.
Simulation of a cold formed hollowshaft by rotary swaging.
This kind of CPU consuming simulation is achieved thanks to the use of the bi-mesh method.