Development of a remote quick CAE system on sculptured metal extrusion die surface

Abstract

The development of a remote quick CAE (RCAE) system is presented in this paper. This system can be accessed through the worldwide web which can be used to quickly generate an optimized sculpture die surface and estimate the forming load on a 3D metal extrusion die. The developed system is a client/server configuration where web browsers were used as a generic client environment serving as the user interface linking the client’s parameter input to the RCAE system located on the server side through the common gateway interface (CGI). The RCAE system on server side was implemented by integrating the Apache web server and a metal extrusion die surface optimization program developed by the author underlying Linux platform. Another server program was also developed to respond client’s requests in real time serving as a remote assistant to assist the usage of the developed system. The communication infrastructure among the remote assistant and clients was based on the common object request broker architecture (CORBA). An optimized die surface can be generated in a few seconds and the surface geometry can be downloaded through both DXF and STL format immediately after the optimization and can then be used, for example, to generate toolpath and also for machining processes verification. The optimized die surface can be viewed and dynamically rotated through a Java applet underlying the Java virtual machine (JVM) immediately. Upper bound method and numerical optimization techniques were adopted in fulfilling the remote quick CAE system. STL file can be used for further simulation using FEM software such as DEFORM 3D to obtain detailed process information. With the synergy of web-based technologies including web server, CGI and CORBA, this paper has successfully developed a new methodology in constructing a remote quick CAE system.