Abstract
Superplastic forming/diffusion bonding(SPF/DB) processes with inner contact were analyzed using a 3-D rigid visco-plastic finite element method. A constant-triangular element based on membrane approximation and an incremental theory of plasticity are employed for the formulation. The hierarchical search algorithm for the contact searching has been applied. The algorithms for contact force processing were designed to handle equally well contact between deformable bodies, as well as rigid bodies. The plate of three and four sheets for 3-D SPF/DB model are analyzed using the developed program. The validity for the analysis is verified by comparison between analysis, experiment and results in the literature.