Open Access

The paper describes parts of the joint research project Swim-RTM including several industrial and academic partners. Its goal is to combine LS-DYNA and the open-source CFD solver OpenFOAM to simulate the production process of continuous fiber-reinforced plastics, particularly the resin-transfer-molding (RTM) process, in which the layers of dry fabric (unidirectional or woven) are formed in the mold (draping) and then filled with liquid resin with high pressure at injection points. Through a combined analysis of both the structural mechanical and the fluid dynamical phases, a better prediction and thereby optimization of the textile components properties as well as injection points can be achieved, improving the manufacturing process. The draping simulation of the fabric layers is carried out with LS-DYNA, while the injection simulation of the matrix material is performed in full 3D with OpenFOAM. A key question in this research project is how local porosities can be derived from the structural computation in the draping step. The purpose of the presented subproject is to develop a graphical user interface (GUI) to enable the simulation of the entire RTM process of long-fiber-reinforced components including the transfer of results between the draping and injection phases. The complete simulation task is relatively complex and involves several software packages, meaning a high effort for the user to get familiarized with. To circumvent this, the GUI aims at requiring from the user only the minimum necessary input data, creating and running the simulation and mapping tasks in the background, and showing graphically all demanded intermediate and final results. For the draping step several current fabric materials such as *MAT_034, *MAT_234, *MAT_235, *MAT_249 are available. Several modelling techniques for the composite setup are also conceivable, including a workflow similar to metal forming applications. In the injection step the fabric is modelled as a porous medium and different transport models and liquid resin types are at hand. For the data transfer between the draping and injection models, i.e. the mapping of data between shell and volume meshes within the developed GUI, first the OpenFOAM volume mesh is converted to LS-DYNA format and the necessary passing parameters are extracted from the output files, then the mapping tool DYNAmap [3] from DYNAmore GmbH is invoked, and finally the OpenFOAM command files are created. After the injection simulation is started and successfully terminated, information, such as the distribution of air inclusions or the shear stress distribution to analyze the reorientation of component fibers, is available and can be transferred from the 3D fluid mesh to an LS-DYNA shell mesh for further computations, for instance a crash simulation. This backward data mapping between volume and shell meshes can then be performed inside the GUI.

In the early-stage development of sheet metal parts, key design properties of new structures must be specified. As these decisions are made under significant uncertainty regarding drawing configuration changes, they sometimes result in the development of new parts that, at a later design stage, will not be drawable. As a result, there is a need to increase the certainty of experience-driven drawing configuration decisions. Complementing this process with a global sensitivity analysis can provide insight into the impact of various changes in drawing configurations on drawability, unveiling cost-effective strategies to ensure the drawability of new parts. However, when quantitative global sensitivity approaches, such as Sobol's method, are utilized, the computational requirements for obtaining Sobol indices can become prohibitive even for small application problems. To circumvent computational limitations, we evaluate the applicability of different surrogate models engaged in computing global design variable sensitivities for the drawability assessment of a deep-drawn component. Here, we show in an exemplary application problem, that both a standard kriging model and an ensemble model can provide commendable results at a fraction of the computational cost. Moreover, we compare our surrogate models to existing approaches in the field. Furthermore, we show that the error introduced by the surrogate models is of the same order of magnitude as that from the choice of drawability measure. In consequence, our surrogate models can improve the cost-effective development of a component in the early design phase.

Isogeometric sheet metal forming simulation is a numerical simulation technique that is used to predict the behavior of sheet metal parts during the forming process [1] and tries to tighten the link with the Computer Aided Design (CAD) description. This technique uses the isogeometric analysis (IGA) approach, which combines the well-established framework of traditional finite element analysis (FEA) and the power of non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS). In contrast to the approach in a “classical” FEA framework, IGA directly uses the ansatzspace of the CAD geometry for analysis, which opens the possibility to work directly on the exact geometry. Furthermore, the smoothness of the NURBS basis functions results in a more accurate simulation [2]. A powerful method to reduce the computational effort is adaptive mesh refinement, that has been developed and optimized for sheet metal forming applications over several years for standard Finite Elements. However, it remains an open question how an efficient local adaptive mesh refinement strategy can be implemented for complex industrial sheet metal forming simulations based on trimmed NURBS models, which are typically the description in Boundary Representation (B-Rep) CAD-models [3]. First investigations for explicit dynamics have been made in [4]. In this contribution, a detailed comparison between FEA and IGA sheet metal forming applications is conducted. The state of the art for FEA and IGA will be contrasted and the need for an efficient adaptive mesh refinement strategy will be discussed. The goal of our research is to develop an efficient adaptive mesh refinement strategy for isogeometric sheet metal forming simulations in LS-DYNA. This will contribute to closing the efficiency gap between IGA and FEA in explicit dynamics, accelerate the product development process and enable the application of IGA in industrial sheet metal forming simulations.

To improve efficiency in automotive press shops, press systems with increasingly high stroke rates are beingimplemented, raising thereby the structural dynamic load on the press and especially on the forming tool. Adetailed knowledge of the vibrations and resulting critical loads is thus essential for accurate and reliable de-signs of forming tools. In this paper, multibody simulation (MBS) of a selected automotive tool is presentedenabling the identification of the vibration of its components. Starting from a pure rigid modelling approach,the MBS model is extended by adding finite element (FE) component to allow extra flexibility in the sys-tem. As an example, a detailed vibrational analysis - both in time and frequency domain - is performed ona blankholder. Also an experimental validation of a blankholder vibration under operational load is carriedout, with test signal data gained by piezoelectric accelerometers.

During the factory acceptance test, the sound levels are measured. If the measured sound levels exceed pre-specified values, modifications on the transformer’s active part and/or tank need to be conducted. Tank resonance, if occurs, at twice main power frequency and its higher harmonics is one of the main reasons of amplifying the generated sound levels. Therefore, it is preferable to know already in the design stage about the occurrence of the tank resonance and propose reliable tank solutions. The current study presents a newly developed model for calculating the mode shapes and its corresponding eigenfrequencies of the tank.