Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Fixtures are extensively used in many industries such as the car industry, to locate and constrain the sheet part during the assembly stage. Fixture layout affects on deformation of sheet parts. Therefore, fixture layout optimization is crucial to the accuracy and quality of products. In addition, the number of clamps that uses in the fixture is another important factor that must be considered in fixture design. This article presents a novel fixture layout optimization method by combining multi-objective ant colony algorithm (M-ACO) and the finite element method. The proposed method optimizes the fixture layout and the number of clamps simultaneously as a multi-objective problem. An approximation of Pareto frontier is acquired by the proposed method. The fixture layout for the side reinforcement of a car is optimized using the proposed method. The results show that the proposed approach performs effectively to optimize the auto-body fixture layout.

Keywords

Fixture layout multi-objective optimization ant colony sheet metal parts number of clamps

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Sderberg

Wrmefjord

Lindkvist

, et al. The inuence of spot weld position variation on geometrical quality. CIRP Ann Manuf Technol 2012; 61: 13–16.

Cai

Yuan

. Deformable sheet metal fixturing: principles, algorithms, and simulations. J Manuf Sci Eng 1996; 118: 318–324.

Xing

Wang

. Fixture layout design based on two-stage method for sheet metal components. Proc IMechE, Part B: J Engineering Manufacture 2013; 227: 162–172.

Ahmad

Zoppi

Molfino

. Fixture layout optimization for large metal sheets using genetic algorithm. World Acad Sci Eng Technol 2013; 79: 1002–1008.

Wang

Yang

Kang

, et al. Development of a prediction model based on rbf neural network for sheet metal fixture locating layout design and optimization. Comput Intell Neurosci 2016; 2016: 1–6.

Wang

Yang

, et al. Optimal sheet metal fixture locating layout by combining radial basis function neural network and bat algorithm. Adv Mech Eng 2016; 8: 1–10.

Liao

. A genetic algorithm-based fixture locating positions and clamping schemes optimization. Proc IMechE, Part B: J Engineering Manufacture 2003; 217: 1075–1083.

Camelio

Ceglarek

. Impact of fixture design on sheet metal assembly variation. J Manuf Syst 2004; 23: 182–193.

Cai

. Fixture optimization for sheet panel assembly considering welding gun variations. Proc IMechE, Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 2008; 222: 235–246.

10.

Liao

Wang

. Simultaneous optimization of fixture and joint positions for non-rigid sheet metal assembly. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 2008; 36: 386–394.

11.

Hajikolaei KH and Wang GG. Optimization of fixture and joint positions in sheet metal assembly: the effect of fixture numbers and constraints. In: ASME 2011 international design engineering technical conferences and computers and information in engineering conference. New York, NY: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, pp.743–750.

12.

Xie

Deng

Ding

, et al. Fixture layout optimization in multi-station assembly processes using augmented ant colony algorithm. J Manuf Syst 2015; 37: 277–289.

13.

Xing

Zeng

, et al. Fixture layout optimisation based on a non-domination sorting social radiation algorithm for auto-body parts. Int J Prod Res 2015; 53: 3475–3490.

14.

Alaya I, Solnon C and Ghedira K. Ant colony optimization for multi-objective optimization problems. In: 19th IEEE international conference on tools with artificial intelligence, 2007, ICTAI 2007. Vol. 1. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, pp.450–457.

15.

Deb

Pratap

Agarwal

, et al. A fast and elitist multiobjective genetic algorithm: NSGA-II. IEEE Trans Evol Comput 2002; 6: 182–197.

16.

Deb K and Sundar J. Reference point based multi-objective optimization using evolutionary algorithms. In: Proceedings of the 8th annual conference on genetic and evolutionary computation. GECCO '06. New York, NY: ACM. ISBN 1-59593-186-4, pp.635–642.

Multi-objective optimization of auto-body fixture layout based on an ant colony algorithm

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References