December 5, 2016
Multi-objective optimization of the C-type press to decrease production costs
Industry: Industrial Equipment | Product: pSeven
Objective
C-type presses are a widely used industrial equipment. These presses are made of rolled steel plates, which is quite a costly material. That makes the manufacturers look for the optimal mass of the press design, considering the operational and manufacturing constraints of the press. With pSeven, DATADVANCE specialists take the challenge of defining the design configuration of the press which would be optimal in terms of both mass and production cost for the ten available options of steel (with varied plate thickness and steel grade). The latter are discrete variables, which adds complexity to the challenge. Moreover, the following design characteristics have to be taken into account:
- Strength and stiffness
- Manufacturability
- End-use requirements
Thus, this is a multidisciplinary problem, where not only the physical model but also the economical, production and end-use models are solved.
Solution
As an input, ten steel plates of various thickness, steel grade, price and strength capability were available. Model geometry parameters were set, among them seven continuous and two discrete parameters (steel grade and thickness).
Then, strength analysis of the FEM model was performed in ANSYS Mechanical, where the maximal operational loading was simulated. Physical, end-use and manufacturing constraints were set. The optimization task was to find the global minimum of the press panel volume and cost for each of the ten values of the discrete variables (steel thickness and grade), considering all the constraints listed above.
Using the pSeven solution method of global optimization, the optimal results for all the ten material options were found in just 12,5 hours with 3000 calls to the solver.
Benefit
As you can see from the chart below, among these ten solutions for each configuration only two are optimal in terms of the cost and volume, the rest of them do not have the best cost/volume ratio.
With pSeven, press manufacturers can analyze these results and decide which type and thickness of steel to select.