Manufacturability Analysis Using Integrated KBE, CAD and FEM

Paper in proceeding, 2008

Finite element analyses (FEA) are often used to test product properties virtually. The process of setting up FEA is many times manual and not strictly formalized; the assumptions made in those calculations highly depend on the analysts’ former experiences and gut feeling. Sometimes there exist parametric FEA-models, but they are hard to interpret for others than the developers. These parametric FEA-models are also highly inflexible. It is beneficial to formalize and automate the process of developing such calculations in order to automate the product development process for mature and variant-rich products where predictions and validations using FEA are demanded in the whole or parts of the design space. Making the automated FEA-models more flexible and more transparent makes them live longer and be more available for engineers that are not FEA-specialists. The FEA-specialists will have more time to solve general problems rather than focusing on instances of the product. In this paper, a proposal is made on how to integrate Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE), CAD and FEM to make the automation of FEA flexible, transparent, and easy to use. The method proposed includes the usage of an inference engine that handles knowledge objects that connect to auxiliary software applications. In the paper, an implementation example is presented where toolsets for the rotary draw bending of aluminium tubing are analyzed for manufacturability.