Research On Reconfigurable Virtual Manufacturing System

Virtual manufacturing is the use of information technology and computer simulation to model real world manufacturing processes for the purpose of analyzing and understanding them. Reconfigurable virtual manufacturing system (RVMS) could be reconfigure itself with the changes of product process. According to the analysis of present virtual manufacturing process, the system layout, material handling flow, the performance of the devices, the quality of the digital products and manufacturing time and cost can be reviewed. The virtual equipments, the virtual manufacturing cells and even the virtual manufacturing system itself can be reconfigured rapidly. And then the new system to be set is analyzed. The process is iterated until the system is perfect. Thus the success of the construction of real manufacturing system is guaranteed.In this dissertation, the characteristics, functionality and application of RVMS are analyzed firstly. On the basis of comparing the features of different RVMS architectures and our research requirement, an open Web-based and modularized RVMS architecture is put forward, which provides the foundation for the reconfiguration of virtual equipment, manufacturing cell and system, the simulation of system layout and manufacturing process.The reconfiguration of virtual equipment is the basis of building virtual manufacturing environment. Equipment is composed of several components. Then one component can be disassembled to several parts. Furthermore, part model is composed of geometry model and attribute simulation model. In this dissertation, the geometry model of a part is established by using UG software, VRML2.0 file, UG Open exploitation interface and OpenGL sentence, the simulation model of movement attribute of each part in its movement chain is got by movement transform matrix, movement freedom degree, movement range and movement velocity etc. Therefore, different reconfiguration of geometry model and attribute simulation model can form different parts. According to some rules, different parts and components can be assembled to get different virtual equipment. These virtual equipments can be operated to simulate the manufacturing process or to analyze the performance of digital products.The definition of the data structure of virtual equipment model provides the foundation for reconfiguration of manufacturing cells and system equipments. For the special...