Method for Energy-efficient Assembly System Design within Physics-based Virtual Engineering in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

Automated assembly systems in the automotive industry require thorough virtual validation procedures complementary to early design stages and prior to commissioning and ramp-up. This contribution introduces a conceptual method to assure an energy-efficient assembly system design within the virtual validation procedure Virtual Engineering as pre-process to Virtual Commissioning. As initial step of the method, relevant system planning data (sequence diagram, BOM, etc.) is analyzed in order to identify energy consumption units (ECUs) and their activities in the manufacturing process. Subsequently, physics-based simulation capabilities based on game engine technology are used to model individual ECUs (electric motors, pneumatic drives, robots, etc.) of the production system and the entire manufacturing process in a virtual 3D-CAE simulation environment. The simulation delivers energy signatures of both the entire production system on an aggregated level as well as on an individual ECU-level. Based on this data, energy efficiency improvement measures are implemented and validated in the virtual model of the assembly system. This entails an energy-efficient production system design while maintaining predefined production system settings like cycle-time and output. The conceptual method is exemplified by a use case of an automated assembly system from the automotive industry presenting preliminary results.