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Quality design of fixture planning for sheet metal assembly

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Abstract

Fixturing plays an important role in enhancing weld quality of the sheet metal assembly process. However, traditional experience-based fixturing schemes and purely optimal fixturing schemes are often sensitive to location fluctuation of the designed locators. In this paper a mathematical representation of deterministic locating and total fixturing for a flexible workpiece is developed first, then a virtual beam model is proposed to evaluate the degree of flexibility of the locating points. A quality design model of fixture planning for sheet metal assembly with resistance spot welding is then developed; both the performance expectation and the variance are considered in the formulation of the objective function; a prescribed factor is used to weight the two objectives. The finite element model based on ANSYS software is set up with a spot weld feature employed and genetic algorithm is used in the optimization process. A simple example and an industrial case illustrate the feasibility of the developed model. This work provides a basis for improving the quality of sheet metal assembly in the design phase.

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Acknowledgements

This project is partly supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 50505010) and also supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong (No. 04300845).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering & Automation, Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen University Town, Xili, Shenzhen, 518055, People’s Republic of China

    Bing Li, Hui Tang, Xiaoping Yang & Hao Wang

Authors
  1. Bing Li
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  2. Hui Tang
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  3. Xiaoping Yang
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  4. Hao Wang
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Correspondence to Bing Li.

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Li, B., Tang, H., Yang, X. et al. Quality design of fixture planning for sheet metal assembly. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 32, 690–697 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-005-0385-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-005-0385-2

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