QForm
Spearheading Forming and Extrusion Simulations

Through its ability to picture and assess precise outcomes, simulation technology has come to help several industries save time and efforts associated with product trials and reduce material wastage. As a sought-after simulation software provider for metal forming and profile extrusion, QForm holds more than 26 years of expertise in the space. Since inception, its founders, Nikolay Biba, Andrey Lishny, and Sergey Stebunov have steered the company along its growth trajectory and watched it become a worldwide business with customers in 42 countries. “We created QForm with our own expenses and whatever resources we had. At that time, we were young postgraduate students with nothing in our hands except knowledge and an endeavor that was fueled by enthusiasm,” recalls Biba, who serves now as QForm UK managing director located in Oxford, England.

The simple DOS-based solution, the Form2D, which the trio doctorate students created, had one powerful edge: utmost compatibility, born out of sheer necessity. “Unlike other expensive products in the market, then and now, all of QForm’s simulation offerings can run seamlessly on any simple computing device,” adds Biba. Today, even basic forge shops run simulations to ensure accuratematerial flow, to determine the load required for forging, or to optimize tool life for example and QForm can be credited at large to this productive paradigm shift.

Chronologically, from QForm 3D through QForm7, QFormV8 and ultimately to QFormVX, each of QForm’s version rollouts has expanded capabilities to cater to the evolving market needs. The release of QForm7 saw the company reinvent its product from scratch—an initiative that took three years to complete. The team at QForm realized that they had “hit the roof” when they launched a newer version based on the rather old technology stack of its predecessor versions. By leveraging QForm’s modern stack, companies can run simulations on the cloud, and can easily import models from CAD and other design software including Dassault’s range of products.

The underlying objective of “quick output with minimal clicks” reflects through QForm’s interface, such that, any user with a basic know-how on the FE analysis can go up and running to experiment and play around with simulations.

Unlike other expensive products in the market, then and now, all of QForm’s simulation offerings can run seamlessly on any simple computing device

Be it for analysis of heat treatment, residual stress and parts distortion, ring rolling, forging and even extrusion simulations, or the design of extrusion dies, QForm accommodates it all. Models pertaining to flow stress data, ductile fracture, or microstructure evolution, to name a few, can be added to the program easily with user-defined functions (UDFs) as a source code. The software is so designed that it gets away with the need for compilers for implementing UDF — by using just-in-time compilation—and comes with a built-in programming tools.

Another novelty that QForm has injected into its offerings deals with the very foundational approach to simulation. While FE is the widely adopted method for simulation, asymmetric property distribution is one of its known problems. Although re-meshing objects with finer mesh can minimize this issue, the method demands more time to run simulations. QForm’s hybrid approach helps overcome this predicament by leveraging the traditional Voronoi segmentation alongside FE analysis which considerably speeds up simulations while delivering precise outcomes.

With their compelling product offering and rich experience revolving around metal forging, QForm has also positioned itself as a provider of simulation services for companies in the space. In parallel, QForm has also made the lives of folks in the academic space much easier. The company hosts yearly international students Olympiads on metal forming wherein participating universities are awarded a free three-month network QForm software license. QForm is evidently rooted to the very generous vision that spurred its humble beginnings in 1991.