A Methodology for Product Performance Analysis under Effects of Multi-physical Phenomena

Abstract

Due to the development of science and technology, the computer has become a useful tool for supporting engineering activities in product design. Many computer aided tools such as Computer Aided Design/Manufacturing (CAD/CAM), product data management (PDM), product life cycle assessment (PLA), etc., have been popularly used in industry for reducing product development leadtime and increasing total product quality. As a result, product designers can easily create the numerical model of product based on these tools. However, it can only represent nominal information of the product. It is not able to deal with various kinds of multi-physical effect during the whole product life cycle, especially in manufacturing/assembly and product usage stage. Performance analysis of product based on this model gives a result that is different from the real product in practice. It can make the quality of the product designed not to meet fully the requirements of customers and users. Thus, this paper proposes a global methodology that allows integrating the multi-physical effect throughout the product life cycle into the performance simulation. The variation sources throughout product life cycle are taken into account performance analysis of product.