The Development And Application Of A CAD/CAE System For TR Forging Dies Of Crankshafts

The crankshaft is an important part of the diesel engine. It should have good integrated mechanical performance and good micro structure due to its heavy task. TR forging technology is an advanced technology used for crankshaft manufacturing. Traditional TR forging technology and die parts design use manual design methods and mainly depend on engineers’experience. This results in long design period and high cost. So, it cannot meet the demand of modernized manufacturing. Using CAD/CAE technology in place of traditional design method of forging process and die to automate and intelligentize the design process, the enterprise can be beneficial in diminishing design period, saving cost on trial forging, and improving forging quality.The author developed a CAD/CAE system for TR forging of crankshaft based on SolidWorks, targeting the demand of TR forging process and die design for crankshaft and the application of the enterprise.The author put the design experience and forging process criterion of the die of crankshaft TR forging into the system, so that it can get the dimension of the forging, billet and die as well as the dimension adjustment table of TR device according to the input crankshaft model. The system can also generate the 3D model of the part, forging, billet and die of the crankshaft and their drawings which accord with the manufacturing demand of the enterprise. It can also generate the forging step layout. The system includes the interface with CAE software. The design result can be imported to CAE software for forging process simulation.In this paper, the development flow, principle and the key technology of the system are described. As an example, the whole design process of a crankshaft is carried out by the system and the geometry of the billet is optimized by finite element simulation of the forging process, then the practicability of the system is verified.