The upset forging stage is the initial work in the forging process. It is used to remove the segregation and cavities of the ingot. Specially in handling large sized ingot, an improper upset forging can cause serious surface tearing. However, there is no detail reference for stable upset forging work. To resolve this difficulty, we studied several factors such as upset forging time, temperature varation of ingot, damage, load and stain rate etc., by using the rigid-plastic finite element approach available in the DEFORM code. Numerical simulation results indicated that: the load value of upset forging works shows severe decreasing trend at a certain point, same as strain rate. Also defects were found to be concentrated around the upper and lower portions of the ingot. With these results, we can estimate a guideline for stable upset forging work.