Project 1 - Instrumental Panel

AIM - For the given component, check for the geometrical errors and mesh with the given element Quality criteria.

Briefing

The given CAD is an instrumental Panel, this part is a plastic component manufactured using injection molding. This component has a main substrate with many dog houses and ribs.

The dog house is an engineering feature used in the plastic trim design. Dog houses are used as a supporting feature. Ribs are a feature in plastic injection molded parts. They are thin extensions that run perpendicular to a wall or plane. They are commonly used to provide additional support and strength to a part.

An advantage of using ribs is that they increase the strength of the part without increasing wall thickness. Walls that are too thick can sink, warp, or result in other defects. Their integration into part results in less material usage; therefore a more cost-effective solution.

Procedure

• Perform a topo and geometry clean up of the whole geometry.

• Measure the thickness of the various components of the panels to verify that thickness variation across the geometry.

• Mid surface Extraction - In this case, the main substrate's outer surface was offset and saved in a separate part file.

• The Mid surfaces for the ribs were generated by creating the middle curve between the cons and the curve projected to the main surface.

• Once the curve and cons were connected together the new macros were generated.
• The dog house was converted to a mid surface geometry by creating intersecting ribs.
• The main substrate is meshed using batch mesh and later the failing elements are fixed manually using smooth and reconstruction.
• The ribs and dog houses then meshed using the best mesh manually.

Learning Outcomes

• Topological Clean up is performed and extracting the mid surface of various trim components.
• Organizing the various macros into separate parts and PID's.
• Improving mesh flow, fixing quality issues.

There are the failed elements where the ribs converged to the Main substrate.

Conclusion:

The Instrumental Panel cad model was successfully converted to FE model.

Drive Link - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-CAGed540d4LV-UjGfAFv-iMDslgHamu/view?usp=sharing