Structural Optimization And Analysis Of Stamping Die For Automobile Panel

In recently years, as the rapid development of automobile industry, many automobile enterprises are making great efforts to shorten development cycle and diminish production cost. Stamping die, as an important process equipment of automobile panel production, its cost and quality has a significant impact on R&D (Research and Development). With the prices rising of energy and iron, saving cost of die has become more and more important. On the other hand, traditional auto panel die are facing new challenges because of the application of new materials and new equipments such as high-strength steel and servo press. All of these need further research on its structural optimization and analysis.This paper summarized the existing methods of die structure analysis. Starting with automobile panel die, the structural optimization and analysis methods for stamping die were proposed based on the sheet metal forming simulation. With the though of decoupling the stamping simulation and structure analysis, using topology optimization techniques, the new stamping-die structures for a hood and a decklid outer panel were designed as an example. And then the law of stress and deformation during stamping process was analyzed.In structural optimization, PAM STAMP 2G was used to get the forces that blank acted on die surface by simulating the stamping process. These forces were transformed and directly applied on finite element model by a FORTRAN program: Pam2OptiStruct.exe. Then an optimization process of die structure was made using topology optimization techniques of OptiStruct. Based on the optimized result, a new-style structure was designed using CAD system CATIA. The new structure has a batter performance than traditional, this is confirmed by comparing structure responses. It has a weight reduction effect about 15% and a stiffness increasing effect about 5%. At the same time, the deformation and equivalent stress are in the permitted range. As the respect of structure analysis, the sheet metal forming process is quasi static. This continuous stamping process was approximated by a sequence of static structure analysis at n (n is an integer) time points. By this way, the law of deformation and stress during the stamping process was described.