Optimization and Numerical Simulation Applied to Design of Stamping Dies

The stamping process is commonly used, it is easily found in vehicles manufacturing. The stamping tool is composed by elements such as: die, punch, drawbeads and blankholder. The objective of this paper is to improve the structural stiffness and to reduce the weight of die through numerical optimization. Usually are used standardized stamping tool's parts that follows standard guidelines. The only part of stamping tool considered in the methodology was the die, other parts like punch and blankholder can also be optimized. A vehicle hood was designed in CAD and after that it was exported to CAE to start the simulations, the first step was the die generation. After that, a stamping process was simulated and the contact forces in the die were extracted and then applied in the control volume designed in CAD. Finally, the constraints, objectives and parameters were changed, so the topological optimization was generated. The results were interpreted and a layout were design in CAD following the pattern given by the optimization. Two different load cases are applied to the die tool, one transportation case and one operation case. The last geometry designed was meshed and submitted at the same load obtained in the stamping simulation process. Displacement and stress simulations caused by loads and own die weight were done. The same process was used in the standard die. The final results show a weight reduction of 13.64% and a decrease in max stress of 18.11%. The obtained results prove the importance of a topological optimization in this kind of project.