A robust and accurate geometric model for automated design of drawbeads in sheet metal forming

A robust and accurate geometric model of real drawbeads that can be used for the automated design of drawbeads is presented in the paper. A three-dimensional geometric drawbead is a lofted surface, of which the section curves are constructed parallel to the stamping direction on the control points. Adaptive control point interpolation is introduced to simplify the management of the drawbead geometry and avoid unexpected shapes. Given primitive control points on a drawbead curve, dominant control points are adaptively obtained with the shapes of both the drawbead curve and the binder considered. An a priori heuristic parameter adjustment strategy is proposed to correct the parameter errors of section curves, which improves the accuracy and consistency of the drawbead geometry. By incorporating the proposed geometric drawbead with a previously developed intelligent drawbead optimization algorithm, a fully automated design process for drawbeads is realized that includes geometric modeling, finite element analysis, intelligent optimization of the drawbead geometry, and die manufacturing. Finally, a fender example is presented to verify the feasibility and validity of the fully automated drawbead design process. The simulation results with the optimized geometric drawbeads and equivalent drawbeads are compared with the experimental results. The proposed geometric drawbead shows remarkable practicability and accuracy in the automated design of drawbeads in sheet metal forming and demonstrates good consistency with the experimental results while the equivalent drawbead model introduces unneglectable deviations. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.