SHAPE OPTIMIZATION OF SHEET METAL PARTS IN A FLEXIBLE PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT

U. Dirksen, N. Austerhoff, F. Maevus, M. Kleiner

Chair of Forming Technology, University of Dortmund, Germany

The design of complex bending parts can be considered as cyclic process of evaluating the manufacturing process and the making of design modifications. This procedure has to be applied when a complex workpiece cannot be manufactured with the available bending processes in its original design, because a bending sequence free of collisions couldn't be found or technical limits of the manufacturing process have been reached. Considering the application of many different combinational and flexible bending methods, a large number of design modifications are possible. Even a product designer with great experience is not able to imagine those all possibilities and therefore fail to use the existing manufacturing potential. In order to prevent the modifications from becoming a trial-and-error process, the product designer has to be assisted in the design-cycle. Therein a iterative refinement of the bent component guides the product designer to a workpiece, which fullfils all constraints and uses the whole manufacturing potential.

Keywords: shape optimization, STEP, evolutionary algorithms