Extension and experimental investigation of a control integrated digital twin for online optimization of forming processes

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Steffen Ihlenfeldt; Professor Dr.-Ing. Alexander Verl
• Subject Area: Production Automation and Assembly Technology ; Primary Shaping and Reshaping Technology, Additive Manufacturing
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438646126

As a result of the increasing individualization of products with smaller batch sizes, the number of variants is increasing, while productivity requirements in the manufacturing of sheet metal parts are rising. Dynamic effects, fluctuations in material properties and wear-related changes in the accuracy-influencing properties of the machine and tool make experience-based prediction of production parameters considerably more difficult. The real-time simulation of the effects of the influencing factors during the operating phase and the thereby enabled online optimization of the control parameters should be made possible by means of digital twins. The proposed project addresses the expansion and experimental investigation of a control integrated digital twin for the online optimization of forming processes. After the basic possibility of quality prediction and parallelized execution on the control system was demonstrated in the first funding period, this continuation project focuses on the expansion of the partial solutions developed so far as well as a validation. In the area of high-performance forming models, this extension means that a generalization of the data-driven approaches is to be investigated. In addition, it is considered how the existing solutions can be transferred into a suitable control and optimization method. On the real-time co-simulation side, the goal is to investigate how the architecture developed in the first funding period can be expanded through the integration of container technologies in order to ensure flexible deployment and how parallelization must be designed depending on resources and processes. During the validation, the functionality of the digital twin will be examined on the real forming press during the production of components.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Dr.-Ing. Armin Lechler; Dr.-Ing. Lars Penter