Efficient Contact Modeling in Nonrigid Variation Simulation

Abstract

Virtual tools and methods are becoming increasingly important in order to predict the geometric outcome in early phases of the product realization process. Method of influence coefficients (MIC) in combination with Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is a wellknown technique that can be used in nonrigid variation simulation. In these simulations, contact modeling is important to ensure a correct result. Contact modeling simulates how mating surfaces are hindered from penetrating each other, giving rise to contact forces that contribute to the deformation of the parts when assembled and the final shape of the subassembly after springback. These contact forces have to be taken into consideration in each MCSiteration. To secure reasonable response times, the calculation of the contact forces needs to be fast. In this paper, we formulate a quadratic programming (QP) problem to solve the contact problem. The case studies presented show that nodebased contact modeling can be efficiently solved through QP.