Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian Remeshing in FE Simulations of Tire Forming

Tire forming simulation is challenging for Lagrangian finite element method codes due to large changes in the geometry of the tire in the course of molding. This Technical Note briefly describes the use of Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) adaptive remeshing in the context of tire molding and curing simulations. The ALE concept generalizes the pure Lagrangian formulation, where the solution within a time step is split into a mesh smoothing step, a history remapping step, and a Lagrangian step. Mesh distortion is reduced in the smoothing step by optimizing the node positions of spatial and material meshes without changing the data structure. The advantage of the ALE approach is demonstrated by a tire forming example.