Particle methods represent a fundamental column of simulation technology. In the last decades, these methods have been used more and more frequently also in the field of en- gineering disciplines. Their main advantage over established simulation techniques such as the Finite Element Method (FEM) is the possibility to represent large deformations and material discontinuities, such as chip formation, particularly well.

The ”Material Point Method” (MPM) is a relatively new technique, which allows solving a continuum mechanical representation of the differential equations using a background computational grid. Mechanical bodies are represented by particles. These not only represent the current deformation state, but also carry material history and material laws. Effectively, the MPM combines the advantages of an Eulerian and Lagrangian approach for greater performance in extreme deformations.

In this thesis, the MPM is presented and discussed in detail. One focus is on the im- plementation of the method in the ELSE code for the explicit solution of engineering problems. Established benchmark problems are performed and complemented to vali- date the presented implementation. Further developments of MPM such as ”Convected- Particle-Domain-Interpolation” (CPDI), contact mechanisms to ideally stiff bodies, and a grid-shift technique are also considered.

The second focus of the work is on the analysis of highly dynamic metalworking pro- cesses. The method is used to mimic the Split-Hopkinson-Pressure-Bar (SHPB) exper- iment to demonstrate the applicability of the current implementation in this domain. Subtractive metalworking processes are then simulated to analyze the performance of the method, and its sensitivity to simulation parameters.