Production Design And Optimization For An Instrument Panel Of Minibus

During the four years from2009to2012, minibus industry in China developed steadily. Inthe year of2009from January to December, sales achievement was225,000minibuses,with a year-on-year growth increase of3.4%. In the year of2012, from January toNovember, total sales achievement of minibus had reached255,000. Meanwhile demandstructure changed too. Europeanism has become a trend for High-end minibus, and dieselpower too. The appearance and modeling tend to be more attractive and comfortable.Development of instrument panel also needs to meet higher requirements. The focus oforiginal instrument panel of minibus is practicality, but now considering the practicality,there are higher requirements for appearance and function. Some technology advantages ofpassenger car instrument panel have been transplanted to minibus gradually.In this thesis, combining with the development process of a minibus, from the view ofengineering, development process of entire instrument panel of minibuses is described.First, a whole development process of instrument panel is described, with brief explanationof each step, and also the work content of engineers involved in each step. Second,definition of regulation is described, considering the product requirements, only internalrules and regulations need to pay attention to. Instrument panel carrier is a large complexplastic part, general design principles must be observed. Finally design requirements andguidelines for instrument panel is raised, which are some special design requirements,which should take into account a lot of surrounding matching and performancerequirements. Then setting an example of a minibus, the thesis explained how to combinethe content mentioned in last chapter with some special detailed requirements and finishengineering design. After engineering design is finished, by software simulating themanufacturing process, some possible problems can be predicted and optimized, andfinally actual product will verify if optimizing measurements can be worked.This paper focuses on the instrument panel digital design and product optimization bysimulation. During instrument panel digital design, in accordance with some elements that need to pay attention to mentioned in previous chapter, and principles which should beobserved, digitization design of instrument panel carrier will be done by CATIA software.Choosing draft direction and angle, fixing reference zone, selecting and defining fixingpoint, defining the specific block, and some typical structural features such as designcriteria wall thickness, stiffener, BOSS column, connector, mounting and holes, thenfinally finish the design of instrument panel carrier. In the chapter FEA, the whole processis described based on FEA process of minibus instrument panel carrier. By meshing,formulating processing parameter, material definition, and gate design, thickness of thecarrier can be inspected, by flow analysis, warping deformation analysis, surface qualityand the deformation tendency of some products can be inspected. Because of myresponsibility, here only influence on product design is concerned, rather than simulatedresults during manufacturing process. By functions simulated by software, defect trendswhich will influence the engineering design can be found; according to the defect trends byanalysis and optimization reasonable engineering solutions will be sought out. During thefollowing process of actual production development, these defect trends will be examinedif they are the same or similar to the trends simulated by software, and then in optimizingprocess the finally confirmed optimization solutions will be verified if they can improvethe product defects.Quality comes from engineering design, so when we design we need to fully consider theentire production process, and the issues that may be encountered when the products areused, we need to predict the problems and make improvement to avoid and prevent theoccurrence of the problems. In the thesis by the process of entire instrument panel carrierdesign and virtual check, and actual verification process, it is proofed that the engineerswhen designing the instrument panel need to be very comprehensive and fully consider theissue and know how to use the software simulation tools to identify problems and raise asolution, at last get the actual validation. Although mold flow analysis is mainly aim at theissues of production aspects, but also through the mold flow analysis the issues can befound and resolved through engineering means. It is very helpful for the engineer.