CAD/FEA Tools and the Analysis of Design for Optimization

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science and Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Patil Yogesh on October 21, 2006

Development Prototype Design of Virtual Assembly Application-Based Leap Motion

Innovation in design engineering practice is very important in the world of manufacturing in the increasingly competitive global market. Prototyping and evaluation measures are inseparable from the design process in the manufacture of a product. And made one of many physical prototypes require very expensive and time consuming, so the technology of Virtual Reality (VR) is needed, so the industry can quickly and precisely in the decision. VR technology combines a human being with a computer environment visually, touch and hearing, so that the user as if into the virtual world. The goal is that users with hand movements can interact with what is displayed on the computer screen or the user can interact with the environment is unreal to be added into the real world. VR is required for simulations that require a lot of interaction such as prototype assembly methods, or better known as the Virtual Assembly. Virtual Assembly concept which was developed as the ability to assemble a real representation of the physical model, the 3D models in CAD software by simulating the natural movement of the human hand. Leap Motion (accuracy of 0.01mm) was used to replace Microsoft's Kinect (accuracy of 1.5cm) and Motion Glove with flex sensors (accuracy of 1°) in several previous research. Leap mot ion controller is a device that captures every movement of the hand to then be processed and integrated with 3D models in CAD software. And simulation of assembly process virtually in CA D software with hand gestures detected by the leap mot ion, assembly parts can be driven either in translation or rotation, zooming and adding the assembly constraint. It also can perform mouse functions (such as left-click, middle-click, right-click and move the mouse cursor position) to a virtual assembly process simulation on CAD software

Hydraulic Jack operated Hose Crimping Machine

The present paper deals with developing of a crimping machine that can crimp hydraulic hoses with its fitting without the use of electricity. Detailed literature review indicates the fabrication of crimping machine that operates with electricity that inspired the authors to develop a hydraulic crimping machine that works without electrical power. Such a crimping machine is very useful when the rig is in movement and suitable for emergency crimping work in order to avoid shutdown time.The author has used Autodesk inventor software for designing critical components of the machine and obtained safety factor more than one for all the critical components. Safety factor less than one leads to the unsafe working condition of the critical parts. Fabrication of the whole assembly has been completed successfully for the required crimping for a hose size of 19.05 mm. The crimping machine has been tested successfully for crimping the required hose size. The design of the machine can be altered so that it can accommodate different die sizes in order to crimp hoses of different sizes

Design Automation Case Study : Modular Locating Fixture

Design automation systems often mimic human designers and implement routine design activities. Beside this, the idea of such knowledge-based engineering is to support developers in the analysis and syntheses of complex engineering artifacts. An instance of this is product configuration. A central aspect of knowledge-based engineering is its ability to draw conclusions about the design context. For this inference, different reasoning techniques have been proposed. One uses constraint satisfaction problems as model-based approach. In the present contribution, the authors report about a case-study about the implementation of a constraint-based configuration system with onboard resources of a computer aided design system on the example of a locating fixture

Improving product design phase for engineer to order (ETO) product with knowledge base engineering (KBE)

In industry currently Computer Aided Design (CAD) is an important tool for the modification, analysis, or optimization of the 3D virtual environment that replicates the physical product. CAD software is an efficient and reliable tool. However, as globalization increases customer demands, this process needs to be faster and more efficient to accommodate changing product design situations, especially for Engineer-to- Order (ETO) products. ^ The traditional method of product design process is to operate CAD software without argumentation. Design engineers create CAD prototypes and drawings based on available knowledge and information which comes from engineering experts, company standards, industrial practices as well as other sources. Research has shown that 80% of knowledge is not captured in the system. It can be time consuming for the design engineer to provide an accurate and consistent virtual product. Researchers have found that the traditional method is unreliable, inaccurate and inefficient. There is room for improvement in the product design situation for ETO products. There is a need to develop a design method that is faster and reduces costs. ^ Knowledge Base Engineering (KBE) is an alternative system that is built to capture and reuse knowledge. KBE technology is well known for reducing lead-time and design errors using automation. Through integrating KBE technology with CAD software, design engineers create virtual product configurations by applying a scripting language to the CAD model. It requires time and effort invested in a different way than traditional design method, which may cost more to develop. However it is more efficient and accurate when producing multiple configurations. ^ This research experiment is to define a better design method for the ETO product situation by comparing the traditional design method with the KBE/CAD integration method. The research question is Is the Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) integration design approach more efficient for the reduction of lead time and design error than the traditional method for Engineering-to- Order (ETO) product situations

Agent collaboration in a multi-agent-system for analysis and optimization of mechanical engineering parts

In mechanical engineering, designers have to review a designed artefact iteratively with different domain experts, e.g. from manufacturing, to avoid later changes and find a robust, optimized design. To support the designer, knowledge-based engineering offers a set of approaches and techniques that formalize and implement engineering knowledge into generic product models or decision support systems. An implementation which satisfies especially the concurrent nature of today's design processes and allow for multi-objective decision-making is multi-agent systems. Such systems consist of entities that are capable of autonomous action, interact intelligently with their environment, communicate and collaborate. In this paper, such a multi-agent system is discussed as extension for a computer-aided design software where the agents take the role of domain experts, like e.g. manufacturing technologists and make suggestions for the optimization of the design of mechanical engineering parts. A focal point is set on the collaboration concept of the single agents. Therefore, the paper proposes the use of an action-item-list as central information and knowledge sharing platform. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Mechanical Design and Analysis of a Discrete Variable Transmission System for Transmission-Based Actuators

Over the past few years, replacing the hydraulic servo actuators with their electrical counter parts for robotics and remote handling systems has been an active field of research. These systems are of particular interest for tasks involved with the US Department of Energy, where the level of radiation exposure is high and the tasks are highly repetitive. With the hydraulic servo actuators, one is concerned with the issues like the high complexity, cost of the system and the difficulty of maintenance of the system. For high payload operations, the hydraulic systems provide an order of magnitude increase in the power density, which is almost impossible to achieve using the electrical servo actuators. Hence, for the electrical servo actuators to be used for high payload operations, the fundamental issue concerning the power and torque density must be addressed. Previous research conducted on this front suggested the use of a variable speed transmission system to spread the servomotor’s torque-speed characteristics across a wider output speed range. This has the effect of allowing smaller high power motors to also deliver high torques at low speeds. By using a variable speed transmission, the motor size can be reduced dramatically while increasing the overall actuator power density in the process. This work goes further into the detailed design of the discrete variable transmission system. A three-stage planetary gear transmission system is considered for the analysis and design. With the use of the three-stage planetary gear transmission, there are a complex and varied design issues involved. Selecting a configuration for the transmission is the first question to be answered. With the given configuration, and the ratios required the individual gears have to be sized accordingly. Other design elements involve the design of the shafting, achieving the desired configuration, bearings, housing and the design of a gear shifting mechanism. A detailed kinematic and dynamic analysis of the entire gear system is required for the design of the various components mentioned above. Analytical results are presented along with a computer-aided analysis of the work using the Pro-Engineer design and analysis software. Future work on this will be to turn this into a commercially available system, which comes down to optimizing the current design. Possibilities of optimization for the current design will be identified. A discussion on the prototype evaluation of the transmission system along with a sample test result is presented

Can designers be proactively supported as from product specifications?

During the design process, designers are concerned with two main types of issues - issues related to “what needs to be achieved” or “whats” and issues related to “how these needs will be met” or “hows”. A literature review carried out revealed that means which proactively make designers aware of artefact life-cycle consequences (LCCs) arising from both their “whats” and “hows” and which guide them on how to minimise or avoid any negative consequences, are lacking. This research thus contributes an approach framework to meet this aim. The approach framework developed is further implemented as a prototype computer-based tool and subsequently evaluated. Based on the feedback obtained from the evaluation, future research directions are also proposed.peer-reviewe