Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 32: 690–697
DOI 10.1007/s00170-005-0385-2
ORIGINA L ARTI CLE
Bing Li . Hui Tang . Xiaoping Yang . Hao Wang
Quality design of fixture planning for sheet metal assembly
Received: 18 August 2005 / Accepted: 27 December 2005 / Published online: 1 June 2006
# Springer-Verlag London Limited 2006
Abstract Fixturing plays an important role in enhancing
weld quality of the sheet metal assembly process. However,
traditional experience-based fixturing schemes and purely
optimal fixturing schemes are often sensitive to location
fluctuation of the designed locators. In this paper a
mathematical representation of deterministic locating and
total fixturing for a flexible workpiece is developed first,
then a virtual beam model is proposed to evaluate the
degree of flexibility of the locating points. A quality design
model of fixture planning for sheet metal assembly with
resistance spot welding is then developed; both the
performance expectation and the variance are considered
in the formulation of the objective function; a prescribed
factor is used to weight the two objectives. The finite
element model based on ANSYS software is set up with a
spot weld feature employed and genetic algorithm is used
in the optimization process. A simple example and an
industrial case illustrate the feasibility of the developed
model. This work provides a basis for improving the
quality of sheet metal assembly in the design phase.
Keywords Fixture planning . Sheet metal assembly .
Quality design
1 Introduction
The sheet metal assembly process is one of the most widely
used manufacturing processes in discrete product indus-
tries. Resistance spot welding constitutes a large percent-
age of this process. In order to control the weld quality,
fixturing plays an important role in the process. According
to the statistical report on the American automotive
B. Li (*) . H. Tang . X. Yang . H. Wang
Department of Mechanical Engineering & Automation,
Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology,
Shenzhen University Town,
Xili, Shenzhen, 518055, People’s Republic of China
e-mail: libing.sgs@hit.edu.cn
Tel.: +86-755-26033485
Fax: +86-755-26033774
industry, about 73% of variation problems from pre-
production to the production phase were caused by fixture
related problems [1]. To improve the situation it is of great
importance to develop a fixture scheme with less sensitivity
to control variables and noise effects. Therefore, in-depth
research on quality design of fixture planning for flexible
sheet metal assembly is desired.
Considerable research focused on automating fixture
design and analysis [2, 3], while other fixture design
research has been directed toward deformable sheet metal
assembly [4, 5]. Rearick et al. [4] proposed a method
combining nonlinear programming and finite element
analysis to design and evaluate fixtures for deformable
sheet metal workpieces with resistance spot welding
(RSW). Cai at al. [5] proposed an “N-2-1” locating scheme
for deformable sheet metals with RSW, and developed a
corresponding algorithm to determine the fixturing
scheme. The author has developed a new locating scheme
with total locating and direct locating for sheet metal
assembly with laser welding [6, 7]. Very little research on
quality design of fixture planning for sheet metal assembly
has appeared recently.
Robust design is to reduce output variation from the
target by making product and process performance
insensitive to the disturbances of noise factors. The
application of robust design has covered a wide range of
engineering problems. Some researchers have carried out
robust parametric design by employing the Taguchi
method [8, 9], and some have concentrated on robust
tolerance design [10, 11]. Some have considered multiple
criteria, and in such cases a compromise procedure is
employed for the evaluation of multiple aspects of the
robust design [12, 13]. Cai et al. [14] developed a robust
fixture design for 3D rigid workpieces by a variational
method.
For flexible sheet metal parts there is no closed-form
solution between the source variation and the output
variation. As the optimized fixturing scheme does not
guarantee the least sensitivity to the location fluctuation of
the designed locators, quality fixturing design for sheet
metals is to obtain a fixturing scheme with consideration of
 691

both performance and robustness. There have been system, the tangent plane at the ith locating point can be
relatively few reports on quality design of fixture planning written as Eq. 1.
for sheet metal assembly. In a previous work the author
T
 T
 T

developed a robust design model for sheet metal assembly n0 i x0  x0i þ n0 i y0  y0i þ n0 i z0  z0i ¼ 0 (1)
with laser welding based on response surface methodology
[15]. This paper will discuss the quality design issue of
Equation 1 can be rewritten in vector form as shown in Eq.
fixture planning for sheet metal assembly with resistance
2 or Eq. 3.
spot welding.
The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 the 0
n0 i  r0  n0 i  r0 i ¼ 0;
T T
mathematical representation of locating and fixturing a i ¼ 1; 2;    p (2)
flexible workpiece is presented; a generic quality design
model for sheet metal assembly is developed in Section 3; or
in Section 4 an illustrative example is given. The last
0
n0 i  AT ðr  r0 Þ  n0 i  r0 i ¼ 0;
T T
section contains a summary of the findings. i ¼ 1; 2;    ; p (3)

where n0 Ti refers to the normal vector at the ith

2 Mathematical representation of locating and fixturing
a flexible workpiece locating point ri0 ¼ ½ x0i ; y0i ; z0i T ; such that
    T
n0 Ti ¼ @Fi0 @x0 @Fi0 @y0 @Fi0 @z0 , and AT refers to the
2.1 Constraint equation for locating flexible workpiece direction cosine matrix of the local coordinate system
with regard to the global coordinate system. As the ith
In the modeling of deterministic locating and total fixturing after-clamping locating point ri0 ¼ ½ x0i ; y0i ; z0i T must
for a flexible body two basic assumptions are used. Firstly satisfy Eq. 3, the constraint equation for deterministic
we assume that the workpiece is enclosed by piecewise locating can be written as Eq. 4 such that:
differential surfaces; secondly, a locator is defined as a
point contact on the workpiece surfaces. A generic locating
 0
n0 i  AT ri0  r0  n0 i  r0 i ¼ 0;
T T
i ¼ 1; 2;    ; p (4)
scheme with p locators is shown in Fig. 1, the O-XYZ
represents the global coordinate system and O′ -X′Y′Z′
represents a local coordinate system. In the figure the solid
and dashed lines represent the workpiece profile before and In this paper a virtual beam model is proposed to
after locating. Assuming that p locating points on the consider the flexibility of the workpiece, where we assume
workpiece surface before clamping are A1, ···Ai, ···Ap after that there is a virtual cantilever connecting origin O and the
clamping the locations of the p locators will move to the locating point Ai as shown in Fig. 2. After clamping, the
points B1, ···Bi, ···Bp due to the flexibility of the workpiece. point Ai will move to Bi, and the total positional variation di
Let the differential workpiece surface equation be can be written as follows,
Fi0 ¼ ðx0 ; y0 ; z0 Þ ¼ 0; i ¼ 1; 2;   p . In the local coordinate 
di ¼ Fci ri3 ð3Eli Þ (5)

di
Ai
locator i
Bi
ri r ''i
locator p
r 'i Y Ap
O
Y r0 Z
X Bp

O
X A1 B1
Z

locator 1

Before Clamping
After Clamping

Fig. 1 Locating scheme for a flexible workpiece Fig. 2 An FE model for a simple sheet metal assembly
692

where E represents Young’s modulus, Ii represents the
moment of inertia, and Fci represents the clamping load.
Substituting Eq. 5 into Eq. 4 we can obtain Eq. 6.
h i

1
Φi ¼n0 i AT ðri þ di  r0 Þ  n0 i ri0 þ AT
T T
 di ¼ 0;
i ¼ 1; 2; ::::p
For a locating scheme with p locators, the constraint
equations can be written as follows:
 T
Φðq0 Þ ¼ Φ1 ; Φ2 ;    ; Φp
where q0 stands for the parameters of six degrees of
freedom of a workpiece, q0  ½x0 ; y0 ; z0 ; e1 ; e2 ; e3 T .
2.2 Conditions of deterministic locating and total
fixturing
According to the definition by Cai et al. [14], if a
workpiece can not make any infinitesimal motion with a
locating scheme while maintaining contact with all
locators, the workpiece is deterministically located. The
mathematical representation of deterministic locating is
that the rank of the Jacobian of the workpiece is six for
locating a 3D object and three for locating a 2D object. The
Jacobian of the constraint equation can be denoted as Eq. 8.
 T
J  Φq0  J1 ; J2 ;    Ji ;    Jp
 
@Φi @Φi @Φi @Φi @Φi @Φi
where Ji ¼ .
@x0 @y0 @z0 @e1 @e2 @e3
When a workpiece is deterministic, locating the com-
plete contact between workpiece and locators can be
achieved and is called total fixturing, in which case the
reaction forces at locating points are non-negative. The
equations of reaction forces based on static analysis are
given in Eq. 9.
 
@Φi @Φi @Φi
FiC ¼  λi ; λi ; λi (9)
@x0 @y0 @z0
where λi denotes the Lagrange multiplier vector. Let the
resultant applied forces and torques be F A and T A, then λi
 T
can be written as λi ¼ JiT F A T A .
3 Quality design modeling of fixture planning
analyzing the relationship between load and variation.
ANSYS 8.0 software is used in this research. An
illustrative example for sheet metal assembly is shown in
Fig. 2. The panels of sheet metals are modeled with plate
element, while two pins of the assembled parts are set as
constraints in the X and Y directions, and the designed
locators are set as constraints in the Z direction.
The traditional way of modeling spot welds involves
(6)
matching the meshes of different parts at the spot weld
connection points, which introduces meshing difficulties
and often requires parts to be meshed manually. In addition,
this approach does not take into account the effects of the
spot weld radius, and it underestimates the strength of the
(7) spot weld connection when the radius of the spot weld is
the same or lesser order of magnitude than the mesh size.
To solve the problem ANSYS software provides a spot
weld feature, which is based on the internal multipoint
constraints (MPC) approach, by which the spot weld can be
located anywhere between the connected parts, indepen-
dent of the mesh and the node locations. This approach
takes into account effects of the spot weld radius input by
the user. ANSYS will create multipoint constraint
equations internally through two contact pair definitions,
one on each spot weld surface. The internal constraint
equations couple the motion of the surface nodes to the
motion of the spot weld node in an average sense. Each
new spot weld set created by the SWGEN command in
ANSYS consists of a beam element and two node-to-
surface MPC contact pairs. Each node-to-surface pair will
generate six constraint equations. One can choose either a
rigid element or a deformable element to link the spot weld
surfaces. Thermal influence is not considered in this paper.
(8)
3.2 A generic quality design model
As developed by Cai et al. [5], an “N-2-1” locating scheme
is appropriate for application in a typical sheet metal
assembly. For most sheet metal manufacturing processes,
the major dimensional problem is the sheet metal defor-
mation in the direction normal to its surface, in this
direction “N” locators are applied to restrain the primary
deformation. Two locators on the secondary and one
locator on the tertiary datum are required to restrain the
rigid body motion of sheet metal parts in the surface
direction. “2-1” locating is generally implemented by a
4-way pin and a 2-way pin. In the assembly process the
locations of the two pins are arranged on the longer edge of
the sheet metal and the distance of the two pins is set
further apart, so that the “2-1” locating can be pre-
determined. Therefore, the design variables are only the
“N” designed locators.
For the general optimal design we can simply define the
following model:

3.1 Finite element modeling minimize f ð xÞ

(10)
subject to gi ð xÞ  0 i ¼ 1; 2; :::; n
As the analytical model of mechanics for sheet metal parts
is still not available, finite element modeling is used in
 693

where x stands for design variables; gi (x) stands for design where M refers to the means of the design variables; Var(xi)
constraints; and f(x) stands for the performance. Letting the is the variance of xi; and Cov (xi, xj) is the covariance of xi
variation of the node i be ωi, in this paper a root square and xj. Based on the central finite difference approach as
approach which represents the average variation of derived in a previous work of the author, the expression for
concerned nodes on the panels is then usedsto evaluate
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi variance can be written as:
P 2
n sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
the objective function f(x), such that f ð xÞ ¼ ωi . X n  

2
σf ¼ σxi  @f
i¼1
@xi
M
However, treating mean value as a measure of variation i¼1
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
performance may still be sensitive to the fluctuation of the X n  

2
¼σ @f
@xi
M
stochastic parameters which gives rise to the need for a
more robust design [16]. A quality design based on multi- i¼1
criteria measures of goal performance is presented in this vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u N  2
paper. In this formulation, the quality design optimization uX 1
¼σ t kf ðxi þ "x Þ  f ðxi  "x Þk (13)
problem is shown to be a vector optimum problem, in k2"x k
which two criteria of the mean value and the standard i¼1
deviation of the goal performance are to be minimized. In
the quality design optimization problem the two design where ɛx refers to the mesh size on the design area of the FE
criteria often conflict with each other; therefore, a trade-off model, and N is the number of designed locators.
between them must be made. Pareto optimality is one Substituting Eqs. 12 and 13 into Eq. 11 we can obtain
possible way of defining a vector optimum [16]. In order to the objective function of the quality design model:
obtain a Pareto optimum, a scalarization approach of the
linear combination method is used, in which the minimum f ðM Þ
of a weighted linear combination of the individual minimize F ð xÞ ¼ð1  αÞ  
μ
objective is regarded as Pareto optimal. In this approach, sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
the relative weights to put on the different objective PN (14)
functions can be easily specified by a prescribed weighting σ ½kfiþ1  fi1 k2
i¼1
factor. The quality design model is given as: þα
j2hjσ
 
minimize FðxÞ ¼ ð1  αÞE ðf ð xÞÞ=μ þ α  σðf ð xÞÞ=σ
subject to Eðgi ð xÞÞ þ βi σðgi ð xÞÞ  0 i ¼ 1; 2;    ; n where fi+1 and fi-1 refer to the objective functions
σðf ð xÞÞ  σU corresponding to the two neighboring nodes xi+1 and xi-1
xL  x  xU of the node i, and h represents the mesh size on the design
area.
(11)

where σU refers to the upper limit of the variance; xL and xU
stand for the lower and upper limits of the design variables;
the quantity βi>0 is a prescribed feasibility index for the ith
original constraint; 0<α<1 is the factor weighting the two
objectives; and μ* and σ* are normalization factors. The
above design model can be converted into a pure mean
value minimization problem for α=0 or a pure standard
deviation minimization problem for α=1.
The Taylor series is employed to simplify the above
quality design model, assuming that all the design variables
take the same variance. First-order approximations of the
mean value and the variance of the response are used in this
paper for the purpose of simplification.
n  
3.3 Optimization algorithm and flowchart
In fixture planning of sheet metal assembly, the input
consists of locations of designed locators and the output is
average deformations of sheet metals. There is no
analytical representation between input and output. If a
general non-linear planning based optimal method is used,
one optimal cycle (corresponding to one FEA run) can only
deal with one fixturing scheme. As quality design needs a
great amount of sensitivity checking runs, it will be time-
consuming. Genetic algorithm (GA) is an optimal approach
which only needs performance information and has been
widely used in engineering optimization. Particularly with
the employment of the sub-case function of ANSYS, one

1X FEA run can handle more fixturing schemes; thus, GA can
Eð f Þ ¼ f ð M Þ þ @2 f @x2i
M  Varðxi Þ be very efficiently used as an optimization method in
2 i1
n  fixture design. There are six steps in a simple GA. The first
X
n X 


þ @2 f @xi @xj
M  Cov xi ; xj  f ð M Þ step is encoding. The encoded strings can be used with
i¼1 j>i various alphabets based on the need of the actual problem,
such as binary, integer or floating-point. Then, an initial
(12) population is produced randomly. The third step is to
evaluate fitness. In engineering problems, fitness is
generally taken as an objective function, and it is also the
694

START designed locators can be obtained by weighting the mean

value and the variance of the objective function. The
weighting factor α can be set in the range of 0<α<1 based
Generate initial on the designer’s preference.
population randomly

4 Examples
Decoding, FEA data file
initial formation/updating 4.1 A simple example

Two rectangular panels of sheet metal assembled with

FEA
Using ANSYS
Extract data from
ANSYS output file
Performance evaluation
combining fitness and robustness
No
Genetic operations:
Convergence? sorting, reproduction,
crossover, mutation
Yes
Output of quality
design results DONE
Fig. 3 Flowchart of fixture planning for sheet metal assembly
basis for selection and evaluation. The higher the fit of the
individuals, the higher the probability of being selected for
reproduction. By applying genetic operators to selected
individual pairs with certain probability, a new offspring
results. In order to avoid preconvergence, a mutation
operator is required. Then, fitness of the new offspring will
be evaluated. If the convergence criterion is satisfied, the
optimal solution is reached. Otherwise, the same procedure
is continued to select and regroup by genetic operators until
convergence. The control parameters of GA in this paper
are determined as follows: the reproduction probability is
0.15, the crossover probability is 0.9, the mutation
probability is 0.01, and the convergence criterion is
kFiþ1  Fi k  ξ .
The flowchart of fixture planning for the optimal process
is shown in Fig. 3. The quality design results of the
resistance spot welding are used here as an example. The
length, width and thickness of the two panels are 80
mm×40 mm×1 mm and 80 mm×40 mm×2 mm. The
material of the two panels are mild steel with Young’s
modulus E=207,000 N/mm2 and Poisson’s ratio γ=0.3.
The assembly process is described as follows. Three spot
weld joints are located at the center of the overlapping area
of the two panels, the X and Y coordinates of the weld
nodes are (70, 0), (70, 20), (70, 40),and the width of the
overlapping area is 20 mm. The welding force is set as
100 N and the acting direction is along the −Z direction. A
“4-2-1” locating scheme is applied to the two sheet metals.
According to Section 3 the “2-1” locating pins can be fixed
so that the quality design objective is to determine the
locations of the eight designed locators that can only move
along the Z direction. The finite element model of the
example is shown in Fig. 2. The origin is located in the
lower left hand corner of the model. “2-1” locating is
simulated with constraint in the X and Y directions, which
is labeled with C12 and C1 for panel one and C34 and C3 for
panel two. Notations B1, B2, …, B8 stand for the initial
locations of the locators before clamping, notations A1,
A2, …, A8 stand for the locations of the locators after
clamping. SHELL63 is selected as the element type in
ANSYS, where the mesh size is 2 mm. Three spot welds
are modeled in the example. In the FE model the designed
locators will move along the edge of the sheet metals, and
in the overlapping area the locator will clamp two
corresponding nodes together which is then treated as
merging two nodes, i.e. as only one constrained node.
In this example the initial population is set at 30 and the
maximum number of genetic generations is 300. Five
different weighting factors with α=0, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 and 1 are
considered and for each weighting factor the optimal
locating scheme is obtained. Results for the quality design
of fixture planning are listed in Table 1. The relationship of
objective function and genetic generations of the optimal

Table 1 Quality design results for simple example

Weighting No. of genetic Coordinates of optimal designed locators Mean value Variance
factor α generations (mm) (mm)

0 159 (60,0,0) (60,8,3) (60,40,0) (0,20,0) (80,0,3) (140,20,3) (80,40,3) (80,36,3) 1.3414 1.3216
0.3 107 (36,0,0) (60,18,3) (58,40,0) (0,36,0) (80,0,3) (140,30,3) (82,40,3) (80,18,3) 1.968 0.21167
0.5 107 (42,0,0) (60,36,3) (58,40,0) (0,34,0) (80,0,3) (140,32,3) (82,40,3) (80,24,3) 3.002 0.1401
0.7 122 (58,0,0) (60,10,3) (58,40,0) (0,28,0) (80,0,3) (140,20,3) (82,40,3) (80,18,3) 3.1126 0.13609
1 124 (8,0,0) (60,20,3) (58,40,0) (0,40,0) (80,0,3) (140,24,3) (82,40,3) (80,10,3) 3.4675 0.13231
 695
Fig. 4 Objective function and 0.16 0.25
α=0.3 α=0.5

Objective Function (mm)

Objective Function (mm)

the number of genetic 0.14
generations 0.2
0.12

0.1 0.15

0.08
0.1
0.06

0.04 0.05
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
No.of Genetic Generations No. of Genetic Generations

0.3 0.4
α= 0.7 α=1
Objective Function (mm)

Objective Function (mm)

0.25
0.3
0.2
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.1

0.05 0
0 50 100 150 0 50 100 150
No.of Genetic Generations No. of Genetic Generations

process is shown in Fig. 4. The relationship of mean value
and variance of the optimal locating scheme with regard to
different weighting factors is shown in Fig. 5. Compared to
the design results, the pure optimal fixturing scheme with
α=0 is the smallest in mean value while the biggest in
variance, and vice versa for the robust fixturing scheme
with α=1.
From the design results we can see that by quality
design with α>0 we can obtain the locating scheme with
relatively large mean value of node variations; however,
the assembly tolerance of the sheet metal parts can be
controlled in a relatively small range.
4.2 A industrial case study
The most typical assembly in automotive body assembly is
door subassembly, which is used in this paper. The
illustrative diagram and FE model for the door subassem-
bly are shown in Figs. 6 and 7, where the element type in

Fig. 5 Diagram of mean value a b

and variance with regard to 3.5 1.4
weighting factor

1.2
3

2.5
Mean Value µ

0.8
Variance σ

0.6
2

0.4

1.5
0.2

1 0
0 0.3 0.5 0.7 1 0 0.3 0.5 0.7 1
Weighting Factor α Weighting Factor α
696
Fig. 6 An illustrative diagram for door subassembly
ANSYS software is SHELL63, and the thickness for the
upper and lower panels are 1.5 mm and 2.0 mm,
respectively. The material of the two panels are mild steel
with Young’s modulus E=207,000 N/mm2 and Poisson’s
ratio γ=0.3. The mesh size is set at 25 mm. The designed
locators will move around the edges of the panels. In this
case the coordinates of the 2-way locating pins are
(72,433,0), (472,433,0), and the coordinate of the one-
way pin is (0, 175,0). Similar to the simple example, the
welds are modeled with the spot weld feature of ANSYS
software.
Fig. 7 FE model of a door
subassembly
Fig. 8 The optimal process with GA
In GA the population number is set at 20, the crossover
probability is 0.85, and the mutation probability is 0.05.
There are two convergence criteria used here, one is that
the maximum number of generations should be less than
300; the other is that the objective function difference of the
best fixturing scheme in every 30 generations should be
satisfied by j"j < 103 . The initial scheme comes from the
local automotive workshop. The process of quality design
with GA is shown in Fig. 8, from the figure we can see that
after 30 generations of evolution the objective function is
approaching stability. In the optimal model shown in Eq.
14 the parameter α is set at 0.75. The quality design results
are listed in Table 2. From the results we can see that both
mean value and variance are obviously reduced and this
shows that the optimal fixturing scheme with quality
design is better than the practically used initial fixturing
scheme.

Table 2 Quality design results for door subassembly (weighting factor α=0.75)
Coordinates of 8 designed locators(mm)
Initial locating scheme (50,0,0),(225,0,0),(600,99.5,0) (193,750,0),(121.5,750,0)
(405.6,734.5,0),(0,550,0),(0,450,0)
Quality design results (75,0,0),(250,0,0),(600,322.2,0) (97.7,750,0),(516.6,575.0,0)
(240.7,750,0),(0,350,0),(0,525,0)
By quality design of fixture planning for sheet metal
assembly, the fixturing scheme with small fluctuation and
insensitivity to the design variables can be obtained, which
will help to continually improve the quality of the body-in-
white assembly in the automotive industry.
5 Summary
This paper presents a quality design approach for fixture
planning of the sheet metal assembly process. In the
mathematical representation of deterministic locating and
total fixturing for flexible workpiece, a virtual beam model
is proposed to evaluate the degree of flexibility of the
locating points on the differential workpiece surface; the
conditions for deterministic locating and total fixturing are
then obtained. To reduce the sensitivity of the fixturing
scheme to the location fluctuation of locators, a generic
quality design model is developed. In the objective
function of the model, both the mean value and the
variance of the variation performance are considered. A
prescribed factor α is used to weight the two objectives. A
root square approach is used to evaluate the mean value of
the variation and a first-order approximation of the mean
value and variance is used to simplify the expression of the
objective function. Based on ANSYS software a finite
element model is set up whereby a spot weld feature of
ANSYS is employed to estimate the effects of the spot
weld radius, and a rigid element links the spot weld
surfaces. A genetic algorithm is used in the optimal
process.
An illustrative example with two flat plates is used to
simulate the simple sheet metal assembly. The simulation
results show that although the smallest average variation
can be obtained based on a pure optimal scheme (α=0), the
obtained fixturing scheme is quite sensitive compared with
the pure robust fixturing scheme (α=1). The purpose of
quality design is to make proper trade-off between the
performance and the robustness. The work provides a basis
to improve the quality of the body-in-white assembly in the
automotive industry.
697
Mean value (mm) Variance (mm)
358.74 9.5625
238.32 1.4152
Acknowledgements This project is partly supported by the Natural
Science Foundation of China (No. 50505010) and also supported by
the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong (No. 04300845).
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