Virtual prototyping of assembly components using process modeling

Assembly is a geometric problem, and assembly success depends on the quality of the mating parts. Practical considerations like deformation during manufacturing, wear and tear of machines and jigs, machine and tool chatter, and other constraints like cost and technical limitations contribute significantly to dimensional and form errors. Moreover, when the same component is subjected to more than one process during its fabrication, the final dimension and form of the part are influenced by each of the process variables. These factors are usually not accounted for during the design for assembly, as the data are not as yet available. This results in improper assembly and part rejection at a later stage. One approach of solving this problem is to develop a virtual prototype, which captures the real manufacturing variables by modeling the process impact on the assembled components. Virtual reality based manufacturing systems have been used in recent years for areas such as shape design and sensitivity analysis, virtual prototyping, and so on. The present work extends this concept by applying a finite element method based process modeling technique for assembly evaluation of a virtual prototype of a manufactured component. A Virtual Prototype Assembly Validation Environment (VPAVE) was developed to test this concept. A case study is presented to outline the use of process modeling for assembly evaluation of manufactured components. This approach can simulate unexpected difficulties that often arise during the actual assembly process due to the influence of production processes. The influence of a welding operation on a peg-in-hole assembly process is evaluated in detail to demonstrate the application of VPAVE.