Research On Virtual Assembly Technology Of Gearbox Based On DELMIA/Ergonomics

The gearbox has many advantages, such as strong bearing capacity, long life and highefficiency. So it is widely used in hoisting and conveying machinery, engineeringmachinery, automobile, shipbuilding industry, aerospace engineering and otherindustrial departments. But the gearbox has a large quantity of parts, and they are indifferent size and shape. As a result, the assembly process of the gearbox is verycomplex, and brings enormous challenges to the promotion of assembly quality andefficiency. At present, some common problems are faced in the assembly process ofgearbox in China. The first one is low assembly efficiency, because most assembly tasksrely on manual work. The second one is high labor intensity because of theunreasonable design and poor working environment. Fatigue and low level of jobsatisfaction are generally reflected. The third one is poor assembly quality which iscaused by workers’ experiences and skill levels. The mistakes are often occurred. Sohow to take the assembly problems and ergonomic problems into account in the designstage of gearbox has become one of the hot research issues.Recently, virtual assembly technology has drawn wide attention in academia andindustry, and had a profound impact on the implementation of advanced manufacturingmode. By creating three-dimensional digital models of products and near-real virtualenvironments, virtual assembly technology has made great progress in replacingtraditional physical prototypes with virtual products. It can take the assembly problemsand ergonomic problems into account in the design stage. It is convenient for thesimulation analysis of the assembly process, the prediction of the assembly performance,the early detection of potential defects and the feedback of assembly information. Theapplication of this technology can not only be helpful to greatly reducing thedevelopment time and costs, expanding the influence of products in the market, but alsobe beneficial to the operation of concurrent engineering. In this paper, the virtualassembly is studied from theory, key technology and practical application by trackingthe development of gearbox and advanced technology of virtual assembly at home andabroad. The main contents are as follows.（1）The existing virtual assembly technologies are concluded and analyzed. Itincludes the virtual assembly sequence planning methods and virtual assembly pathplanning methods. Based on the structure of gearbox, the assembly sequence planning method of a combination of disassembly method, component identification method andassembly relation graph method is proposed. The virtual assembly path planningmethod based on engineering semantics is chose.（2）The virtual assembly process of gearbox is studied in DELMIA. The DPMmodule is used to define the assembly path of every component, realize thethree-dimensional dynamic simulation and synchronously carry out the interferencedetection.（3）The Ergonomic module is used to examine the rationality of the assembly process.And a variety of ergonomics analysis and optimization are conducted in the process.（4）The virtual assembly of gearbox is displayed in the interactive device.