Towards Robustness Assessment in Virtual Testing - Manufacturing Influences by Simulation-based Methods in the Virtual Product House

Abstract

The result of a virtual design process is an ideal structure, the virtual product in the "as-designed" state. While it is possible to perform probabilistic analyses in the design phase to explore the stability of the solution, there usually is one final "as-designed" configuration. This and the digital twin serve as images of the nominal state and the real manufactured structure. While there is only a single "as-designed" dataset of the virtual product, there is an individual digital twin for each physical instance whose data and properties may vary due to influencing factors. Within physical testing it is not possible to consider all these different variations, especially on higher levels of the building-block-approach. To reduce the development risk and gain earlier insights in the effects of the manufacturing on the structural performance simulation-based manufacturing methods are integrated in the end-to-end process, from virtual design to virtual testing, developed in the Virtual Product House (VPH). These enable the process to give a quantifiable estimation of these uncertainties in early development or can assess whether certain manufacturing scenarios are even valid options due to their effect on the virtual product. In this text, approaches are presented to determine the scatter of the use case in the VPH start-up project, a multifunctional multi-spar composite moveable, from expected manufacturing uncertainties. A manufacturing scenario consisting of an automated fibre placement (AFP) for the creation of the preforms, the infusion and the subsequent curing is considered.

After these steps, the virtual product information for the "as-built" state is readily available for the chosen manufacturing process parameters. With the "as-built" configuration it is possible to use the following virtual testing methods with a more realistic representation of the structure or to return the effects from manufacturing on the "as-designed" state of the virtual product back to the design phase. Both aspects contribute to an improved understanding of the virtual product and increase confidence with regard to production and certification.