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Forging is one of the traditional bulk metal forming processes used extensively in the automotive industry. Forging has a distinct advantage versus other metal manufacturing processes in terms of strength, grain orientation, reliability, near net shape with lower material utilization, and machining requirements leading to cost effectiveness, etc. Today, the automotive industry is going through the critical phase of reducing component costs through material reduction and optimized tool consumption. With this challenge, process modeling is gaining more momentum in the industry to optimize blank size and improve the tool life with required part quality, while also evaluating press tonnage requirements for effective equipment usage. It also enables integrated process modeling by understanding the microstructure, residual stress/deformation built into the manufactured part, and integrating with material property changes for subsequent part performance prediction.

Historically manufacturing variability has been considered as a noise factor due to limited insights about manufacturing history and its influence on part performance. With improvement in computational power and enhancements in commercial simulation tools, it is now feasible to study the influence of manufacturing process on product life in addition to manufacturability. This study demonstrates the concept of as manufactured part performance prediction utilizing forming simulation software to capture deformed geometry along with residual stresses and its integration to performance simulation tool using sheet drawing operation. Simulation predictions are verified and validated with available experimental data. This approach helps to visualize the variation in part performance with respect to manufacturing process change including process sequence, process parameters and tooling design change.