Abstract
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) have attracted growing attention from transportation industry because of their superior performance over metal counterparts. The thermoforming process has been invented for mass-production of CFRP parts. This thermoforming process involves multiple steps and numerous parameters, and one of the most important process parameters is the initial blank geometry. To optimize blank geometry in thermoforming and minimize trimming work for the final part, an innovative approach integrating automatic mesh adjustment and FEA modeling method for preforming is developed as foundation of design and reported in this paper. Preliminary trial-and-error optimization algorithm demonstrates that this newly-developed approach can accurately design blank geometry under various typical process conditions.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 197-203 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | 48th SME North American Manufacturing Research Conference, NAMRC 48 |
Volume | 48 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2020 |
Event | 48th SME North American Manufacturing Research Conference, NAMRC 48 - Cincinnati, United States Duration: Jun 22 2020 → Jun 26 2020 |
Funding
This work was supported by a subcontract from the Ford Motor Company with funding from the Office of Energy Efficiency and enR ewable Energy (EEER ), U.S. Department of Energy, under Aw rd Number DE -EE0006867.
Keywords
- Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP)
- Finite element analysis (FEA)
- Thermoforming
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Artificial Intelligence
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering