Methodology to build an assistance tool dedicated to preliminary design: application to compression springs

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to develop a design assistance tool dedicated to preliminary design. This tool increases interactivity and enables the design space to be explored. The user-friendly interface proposes to define design parameters with interval values. In addition, an objective has to be selected and the tool offers an optimum design. To take full advantage of all the exploration's capabilities, it is suggested that all the potential optimization functions be considered as design parameters and that each design parameter be considered as a potential objective function. This method was applied to build a software mock-up dedicated to compression spring design. The industrialization process leading to the commercial software is detailed.

Interval computation and constraint propagation for the optimal design of a compression spring for a linear vehicle suspension system

“…This design problem has been extensively studied in many excellent scientific works [18][19][20][21][22] and treated by several techniques that are mainly based on stochastic methods to ensure the optimization of the design, but in these studies the static sizing was studied separately from the dynamic sizing. So we propose in this study to combine the consideration of static and dynamic requirements in the same preliminary design phase which represents our own scientific contribution.…”

“…We are interested here in problems of optimal design [5][6][7] of components and we propose an improvement to these tools and methodologies using constraint satisfaction techniques [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Our approach is applied to an optimal sizing case of a compression spring [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. The springs are structural elements designed to maintain and store the energy and mechanical work based on the principle of the flexible deformation of the material.…”

An uncertainty-based approach to drive product preliminary design

“…behaviors, which link the design parameters to the product performances. Some of them use MDO (Multidisciplinary Design Optimization) [23] or CSP (Constraint Satisfaction Problem) [20,24].…”

Optimal catalogue selection and custom design of belleville spring arrangements

“…One of them has been proposed to be applied to spring design [13]. Thus, synthesis tools have been proposed for cylindrical compression [14] and traction [16] springs, or conical springs [17] to provide enhanced assistance.…”