Design And Finite Element Analysis Of Fixture On Engine Inlet Manifold Based On Error Modeling

In automotive engineering,an inlet manifold is the part of an engine that supplies the fuel/air mixture to the cylinders,it located between the carburetor or throttle body and the cylinder head.The primary function of the inlet manifold is to evenly distribute the combustion mixture(or just air in a direct injection engine)to each inlet port in the cylinder head(s).Inlet manifold is made of high heat-resistant nylon material basically,completed the welding process by the vibration friction welding machine.Due to its complex structure,the quality of the processing technology will highly affect the engine efficiency.However,the fixture design of the inlet manifold is related to the quality and the production cost of the workpiece,also it affect property and quality of the equipment assembled by these parts immediately.Furthermore the accuracy of fixture’s clamping error also has a great impact on it.In this type of inlet manifold workpiece,it is a complex components with irregular multi-surface in particular,so it will lead to the positioning errors easily by the clamping process,and result in the problems of low machining accuracy,low efficiency,time-consuming and labor-intensive and the increasing costs,moreover,it has a direct impact on the efficiency of engine cylinder.So it is extremely important to study the design of the intake manifold fixture for overcoming the above problems.In this process of machining,the inlet manifold has to be clamped couple times,It leads to the low accuracy,low efficiency and high cost of processing.This paper does some related design,modeling and analysis for the fixture on inlet manifold tensioner brace.First of all,it expounds the background,research significance about fixture system,mainly focus on the development of conceptual design both at home and abroad.Secondly,according to the structural characteristics and processing methods of the intake manifold,the positioning analysis and clamping process analysis can be finished by the traditional fixture design rules.The design of the fixture body and the establishment of the 3D model were carried out by using CATIA through CAFD(Computer Aided FixtureDesign).Import the simplification inlet manifold model into ANSYS Workbench,Through the application of different loads several times and analysis of its deformation error,building the deformation error model and finding the optimal clamping scheme.Then,importing the fixture body into the ANSYS Workbench,the static deformation performance and dynamic anti-vibration performance of the fixture during the working process are tested by the finite element analysis.It is proved that the fixture has the advantages of convenient clamping,precise positioning,high precision,high efficiency and low cost,also it has a certain practicality.Finally,the advantages and disadvantages of this fixture design are summarized,and the further research contents and direction of the design of intake manifold fixture are pointed out.