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1680 |
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009, GST: Messe Forum 9:30 AM International |
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Fast welding distortion prediction for the production planning in automotive industry |
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Dmitrij Tikhomirov* / INPRO GmbH, Deutschland Jochen Weiher/ INPRO Innovationsgesellschaft für fortgeschrittene Produktionssysteme in der Fahrzeugindustrie mbH, Deutschland Karl Roll/ Daimler AG, Deutschland Thomas Franz/ Volkswagen AG, Deutschland Matthias Kröger/ ThyssenKrupp Umformtechnik GmbH, Deutschland |
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The automotive industry requires the reduction of the time to market and hence the product development time. On this way the numerical simulation of production processes allows to get insight into the parts' behavior and to evaluate the feasibility of the production steps. More and more the simulation is applied in the welding production planning, especially for the purpose of early distortion prediction of complex automotive parts. If the welding distortion is known, it can be taken into account before forming tools are constructed and first sheet parts are produced. Thus, the number of prototypes can be reduced and considerable time and cost savings can be achieved. Based on the requirements of the production planning a new software tool WeldingPlanner has been developed by INPRO and successfully applied for fast welding distortion prediction for complex automotive parts. Based on a simplified physical model and easy-to-use graphical user interface the distortion of real parts is computed within some minutes up to a few hours. Hence, many different variants of welding sequences and clamping conditions can be evaluated with respect to distortion within a short time. This is an important factor for the production planning, since the time period for the decision process is strictly limited. The presentation is organized as follows. After a short introduction the requirements of the production planning concerning the welding distortion evaluation are given. Then the newly developed software tool WeldingPlanner is briefly described and the calibration of the simplified welding model is discussed. Furthermore, the application of the WeldingPlanner to real automotive parts is demonstrated for a hatch of Daimler, a B-pillar of Volkswagen and a twist beam rear axle of ThyssenKrupp. As conclusion, recommendations for the production process are given. |