The production of a component also often influences the mechanical properties.
One example is the fiber orientation of injection molded components. In most cases, components are designed mechanically by means of simulations during development. Due to insufficient knowledge about manufacturing, mainly isotropic, i.e. direction-independent, material models are used for this purpose. This leads to the fact that essential aspects are not considered during the design process and thus the real mechanical behavior can differ significantly from the simulation results in the final tests.
The consequences are a great loss of time and costly changes to the tools.
We consider the production already during the mechanical design of the components.
Since M.TEC CAE not only carries out the mechanical design of the components but also the design of the production by means of simulations, the component properties resulting from the production can be considered in the mechanical simulations.
For this purpose, our engineers have developed appropriate interfaces and software routines in order to be able to integrate the results from the simulation of the production into the mechanical design.
Among others, the following production-related properties can be considered in the FE simulation:
- Fiber orientation of injection molded components
- Laminate structure for composite components
- Wall thickness distribution for thermoformed components
- Wall thickness distribution and work hardening for stamped / bent components
- RTM simulation based on the results of the drape simulation
- Overmolding of organic sheets based on the drape simulation