Multidisciplinary design and optimization of a plastic injection mold using an integrated design and engineering environment

Abstract

In order to remain competitive with respect to low-cost overseas markets, domestic moldmakers will have to increase the productivity of their engineers and maintain high quality standard, while dealing with the problem of an aging workforce. To increase the competitiveness of the European automotive industry, the concept of and Integrated Design and Engineering Environment (IDEE) has been developed within the 6th framework European project Pegasus - Integrated engineering processing & materials technologies for the European sector. The IDEE consists of a distributed set of software applications able to accelerate the design process of plastic injection molds by means of process automation and multidisciplinary optimization techniques. The IDEE combines into a single user-friendly platform different technologies ranging from Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) to Process Integration and Automation (PI&A). Central to the IDEE framework is a KBE application, which consists of a fully parametric rule-based mold product model. On the basis of the geometry of the plastic part to be molded and other (user) inputs, the KBE application can automatically produce different mold configurations and variants. In this way, product knowledge is leveraged to automate the repetitive and therefore time-consuming CAD modelling activities typically encountered in industry. Next to the mold geometry, the KBE application is able to generate different reports that serve as input to in-house developed or commercially-of-the-shelf CAE applications, like Autodesk® Moldflow® Synergy. The resulting software framework enables the simulation and analysis of the injection molding process, from which important performance characteristics can be retrieved. Other disciplinary applications are used to assess the cost and the environmental impact of the molding process and tooling. All the IDEE software applications are provided as web services on remote servers according to the Software as a Service (SaaS) paradigm. Noesis’s Optimus software has been used to link them into a seamless framework, control their execution and support all data exchange in an automated fashion over the internet. The scope of this paper is to describe the architecture and main functionalities of the IDEE and provide the results of studies performed on representative plastic parts for the automotive industry. It is demonstrated how the IDEE can enable multidisciplinary optimization of the injection molding process and find solutions that best balance manufacturing performance and product quality. By means of the IDEE many concepts and customized variants can be quickly generated and evaluated in terms of hours or days instead of weeks or months, thereby supporting a more efficient development of innovative and complex parts. The reliability of the evaluation is enhanced by the early use of computer-based simulations in the design process, and the success rate of the overall component increased because of the more disciplines included in the evaluation (tooling design, material processing, cost, environmental impact). The IDEE can help the designer to virtually prototype and analyze the product and, eventually, support the “first-time-right” design principle.