Abstract
High demands made by customers and the need to reduce production costs while maintaining high quality of products brings the necessity to include specialized models and criteria in the numerical analysis of forging processes. The latest approaches offered by commercial software manufacturers do not include comprehensive analysis of defects. In many cases is necessary to include user subroutines dedicated to specific forging operations. Interdisciplinary knowledge allows selection of creation of forecasting technique typical for analyzed forging process. The main purpose of the review article is to show the latest tools, their modifications and extensions for predicting defects typical for forging processes and often observed in the industrial process using FEM modelling. The authors showed that additional parameters or functions can support the conventional stress and strain parameters to extend the possibilities of interpretation, e.g. by means of postprocessor subroutines. Various forging processes, typical defects and optimized method of their forecasting were presented. The research methodology was a combination of numerical modelling, laboratory tests and analysis of industrial processes.