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Published in:
2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Optimization of Manufacturing Tolerances on Sheet Metal Components in the Development Process
Authors : C. Hayer, S. Fiebig, T. Vietor, J. Sellschopp
Published in: Advances in Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
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Abstract
In an increasingly challenging environment of growing competition and stricter legal regulations, the concept of lightweight design gets more and more important for the automotive industry. Usually, the goals of lightweight tend to conflict with the robustness of the designs. The scattering of the geometry within the manufacturing tolerance leads to a divergence between the test bench results and the prediction from simulation. For an optimized lightweight design, this deviation will often lead to a violation of the requirements. In this case, the part has to be re-designed to improve its robustness, causing an additional time expense, higher costs and a higher weight.
This paper presents a new way to answer the conflict of objectives between lightweight and robustness. By the integration of manufacturing tolerances in an early stage of the product design, the robustness of a part can be improved without increasing its weight. A parametric CAE model is used to represent all deviations of the geometry and material properties within the tolerance range. Additionally, an analytic expression of the relevant simulation results is built. These tools are not only used to predict exactly the scattering of the test bench result, but also allow optimizing the tolerance ranges in order to obtain a 100% satisfaction of the requirements in every tolerated configuration.
The optimized tolerance ranges make it possible transferring the weight advantage generated in the structural optimization into the design of prototypes. Through a better prediction of the test bench results in the simulation, unnecessary development loops can be avoided. The presented procedure is the first one that integrates manufacturing tolerances within the simulation with the objective of optimizing the tolerance ranges beyond a simple parameter optimization. Thereby, new weight potentials are allowed, and the development process can be substantially shortened.