SHEET STAMPING PROCESSES DESIGN: OPTIMIZATION METHODOLOGIES FOR ROBUST AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIUS DECISION.

Sheet Stamping Processes Design: Optimization Methodologies for Robust and Environmental Conscious Decisions.

A Comparison between Three Meta-Modeling Optimization Approaches to Design a Tube Hydroforming Process

Computer aided procedures to design and optimize forming processes have become crucial research topics as the industrial interest in cost and time reduction has been increasing. A standalone numerical simulation approach could make the design too time consuming while meta-modeling techniques enables faster approximation of the investigated phenomena, reducing the simulation time. Many researchers are, nowadays, facing such research challenge by using various approaches. Response surface method (RSM) is probably the most known one, since its effectiveness was demonstrated in the past years. The effectiveness of RSM depends both on the definition of the Design of Experiments (DoE) and the acc…

A comparison between three meta-modeling optimization approaches to design a tube hydroforming process

Material Substitution for Automotive Applications: A Comparative Life Cycle Analysis

Lightweight materials have become an important strategy in the automotive industry to enable vehicle weight reduction and reduce fuel consumption. However, when developing specific strategies, the overall benefits of any material should be analyzed throughout its life cycle to comprehend energy/environmental differences that arise during its processing and its final use. A key example is aluminum which despite having great potential in the use phase requires large amounts of energy to process. This paper provides a comparison between aluminum and steel utilizing a life-cycle approach. This approach reveals the importance of incorporating a recycling strategy to leverage aluminum’s low-weigh…

Robust design of a sheet stamping process: approaches to control the inner process variability

The robustness investigation has become a crucial issue in the design of the sheet metal forming operations. The uncontrollable effects of some noise variables heavily influence the final process results, often evolving up to the failure of the process design. Therefore, tools able to handle such variability are worth developing with the aim to minimize the scattering of the investigated process performances despite of the process design. Moreover, the stamping process operations are usually characterized by objectives with conflicting behaviors and a set of compromise solutions, referred as Pareto front, is finally obtained instead of a global optimum. Therefore, the question becomes more …

Design of sheet stamping operations to control springback and thinning: a multi-objective stochastic optimization approach

Abstract The aim of this paper is to develop a design tool for stamping processes, which is able to deal with the scattering of the final part quality due to the inner variability of such operations. Such variability is one of the main drawbacks for a robust process design. It results in a scattering of the most significant process results and depends on several parameters. The so called noise factors greatly influence final result variability, which often means rejecting parts and anyway achieving final properties different from the specified ones. The process investigated in the paper is an S-shaped U-channel stamping operation carried out on a lightweight aluminum alloy of automotive int…

A Comparative Analysis of Different Robust Design Approaches in Sheet Stamping Operations

A crucial issue in sheet stamping optimization problems is related to the process robustness improvement: critical scattering in the investigated performances arises due to some noise variables influence, often evolving up design failure itself. In fact, strong variations in the final stamped part or fluctuations of strain distribution may lead to an uncontrolled process design. Such variability cannot be controlled but anyway it is possible to develop proper design tools able to identify robust process calibrations above which the noises variations effects are admissible. In this paper, a multi‐objective optimization problem was analyzed, with the aim to minimize both excessive thinning an…

Deep Drawing Process Design: A Multi Objective Optimization Approach

In sheet metal forming most of the problems are multi objective problems, generally characterized by conflicting objectives. The definition of proper parameters aimed to prevent both wrinkles and fracture is a typical example of an optimization problem in sheet metal forming characterized by conflicting goals. What is more, nowadays, a great interest would be focused on the availability of a cluster of possible optimal solutions instead of a single one, particularly in an industrial environment. Thus, the design parameters calibration, accomplishing all the objectives, is difficult and sometimes unsuccessful. In order to overcome this drawback a multi-objectives optimization procedure based…

Deep drawing process parameter design: a multi objective optimization approach

Influence of material properties variability on springback and thinning in sheet stamping processes: a stochastic analysis

A very critical issue for stamping operations is the improvement of process robustness. The reliability of final results, in fact, strongly depends on the intrinsic variability due to stochastic behavior of many parameters, namely, operative ones and material properties. A given process performance may undergo a variation around the value which would be obtained neglecting stochastic behaviors of the operative or material parameters (i.e., considering a deterministic parameters behavior). Such variation introduces a significant source of uncertainty within the process design: a possible consequence may be the rejection of some stamped parts. In this paper, reliability analyses aimed to evid…