Regular Article

Application of a new integrated optimization approach in sheet hydroforming process

¹ Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran 16785-136, Iran
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Birjand, Birjand 97175-376, Iran

^* e-mail: m.hoseinpour@srttu.edu

Received: 15 November 2017
Accepted: 20 January 2018

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to produce a desired hydroformed product under the optimal pressure profile. To achieve this purpose, a new adaptive optimization approach is proposed based on fuzzy logic control (FLC) integrated with simulated annealing (SA) optimization technique and ANSYS parametric design language (APDL). An intermediate MATLAB code was developed and used to manage data transfer automatically between FLC, SA and APDL, in which there would be no need for any interaction of user/designer during the optimization process execution. This method aims to find the optimal pressure loading profile, prevent wrinkling and necking failures, reduce unsuccessful iterations, and enhance convergence precision. This method is capable of adaptively changing the process parameters in order to reach the optimized values with higher accuracy in a more reasonable time. The results show a good agreement between the proposed optimization approach and experiments. The developed optimization approach is a practical and reliable design tool for industrial production of any symmetric shell cups using hydroforming process.