Key technology research and system development of complex aircraft skin stretch-forming simulation

To pre-estimate the formability of complex aircraft skin parts and simulate the whole deformation processes, a finite element simulation system-STRETCHFORM is developed to assist the manufacture according to the stretch-forming feature of skin parts. The system is composed of three function modules-pre-processing, solving and post-processing, and key techniques including motion of mechanism, static implicit algorithm, contact and search algorithm as well as evaluation criterion of forming quality are analyzed and accomplished. Simulations of stretch-forming process for S shape skin and air inlet part are carried out, demonstrating the good precision and stability in comparison with the results of MARC, PAM-STAMP and experiment.