Optimum Design Of Addendum Surfaces In Sheet Metal Forming Process.

The design of addendum surfaces in sheet forming process is very important for the product quality, but it is very time-consuming and needs tedious trial-error corrections. In this paper, we propose a methodology to automatically generate the addendum surfaces and then to optimize them using a forming modelling solver. The surfaces’ parameters are taken as design variables and modified in course of optimization. The finite element mesh is created on the initial addendum surfaces and mapped onto the modified surfaces without remeshing operation. The Feasible Sequential Quadratic Programming (FSQP) is adopted as our algorithm of optimization. Two objective functions are used: the first one is the thickness function to minimize the thickness variation on the workpiece ; the second one is the appearance function aiming to avoid the scratching defects on the external surfaces of panels. The FSQP is combined with our “Inverse Approach” or “One Step Approach” which is a very fast forming solver. This leads to a very efficient optimization procedure. The present methodology is applied to a square box. The addendum surfaces are characterised by four geometrical variables. The influence of optimization criteria is studied and discussed. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]