The objective of the study is to improve the quality of wheel bearing hub by the rigid-plastic finite element analysis and the response surface methodology. The rigid-plastic finite element codes, AFDEX-2D and DEFORM-3D, were used to analyze the two-dimensional and three-dimensional forging processes, respectively. The response surface analysis is used to find the minimum underfill by the variation of design variables such as the height of billet after upsetting and punch angles of blocker dies. The metal flow of forged product shows good agreement with the results from 20 and 3D analysis. Also, the quality of the wheel bearing hub has been improved by the optimization of design variables and the machining time has been reduced by the machining allowance.
