A trade-off optimization model of environment impact and manufacturing cost for machining parts

Abstract

Motivation: Throughout the life cycle, the environmental impact and manufacturing costs of a part are largely determined at the design stage. Therefore, a part design optimization method considering these two factors is proposed in this paper. At the same time, the comprehensive benefit is taken as the trade-off of these two factors. The reduction of the comprehensive benefit indicates that the optimized part has achieved better environmental and economic performance results. Methods: Firstly, the model is reconstructed using the dimension-driven method, and the feature information of the new part is extracted. Then, machining process planning is carried out based on the feature information. Secondly, a design optimization model for the comprehensive benefit is established based on the genetic algorithm. The model takes the dimension parameters of the part as the optimization variables and the reduction of the comprehensive benefit as the optimization objective. With the help of the Simulation plug-in for SolidWorks, the static analysis of the optimized model is conducted to determine whether it meets the performance requirements. Finally, the design optimization prototype system oriented to comprehensive benefit is established. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by taking the intermediate shaft of the belt conveyor reducer-sixth order step shaft as an example. Results: The case study shows that the optimization result of comprehensive benefit is 1.63%, which verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the part design optimization method proposed in this paper.