<p>The folding defects is a common flow-induced forming defects in metal forming processes, especially in die forging and plate forging, where the localized material flows from different directions under nonuniform compressive stress. Currently, most numerical simulation soft wares are out of their depth for folding defects prediction due to the remeshing issues. Besides, for axisymmetric deformation model, the object is established as a half model, folding defects around the axisymmetric centerline is hard to identify using the common prediction method. In the present work, a classical plate forging process named axisymmetric boss forming is selected as a research object, and a new finite element (FE) analysis strategy for prediction of folding defects in the axisymmetric boss forming process was developed by the Subroutine secondary development on the DEFORM-2D platform. The folding formation and evolution mechanisms during axisymmetric boss forming were analyzed by numerical simulation with different prediction algorithms and validation experiments. As a results, two types of folding mechanisms in axisymmetric plate forging process were analyzed from dimple and buckling under different initial thicknesses, boss radius and boss profile radius. The proposed prediction algorithms subroutined on DEFORM-2D platform showed a good agreement with the experimental results.</p>