FINITE ELEMENT OPTIMIZATION OF STATOR BY CASTED AND WELDED STRUCTURES

Ganapati Kapashi, Prashant Mulimani, Veeranna D. K, S. P. Dodamani

Abstract: Casting and welding are the major manufacturing process in the industry. Each method has its advantage and disadvantage. Due to the advances in computer based numerical techniques, simulation can be carried out to find the applicability of the method for the given problem can be carried out and the particular process can be considered for the manufacture which will reduce the cost of the product, inventory and manufacturing time. Finite element methods with its advanced softwares like ansys, Nastran and LsDyna can be used for manufacturing process simulation for better product design and optimization. In the present work, a casted and weldment structure is considered for the same product(Stator) for analyzing for better strength with the low material requirement. Initially the geometries are built using catia software and dimensions are represented using Catia drafting software for further understanding. The structures are meshed using Hypermesh for good quality mesh satisfying the criteria required for good meshing which gives much better results. Shell mesh is adopted for optimized results. Shell mesh has the advantage of variation of thickness during optimization process. In the casted structure, total of 11 sections are considered for optimization process. Total of 30 design sets are obtained satisfying the state variable requirement. The best set shows 504kg weight requirement for the problem. The graphs are represented to shows the effect of design variables on the weight of the structure. Further analysis on welded structure shows, the initial design with higher weight of 780 kgs failing to satisfy the design requirement of displacement limitation of 0.26mm. So casted structure is better then welded structure in load carrying capacity for the same weight even factor of calculations shows lesser displacement and lesser stress for casted structure compared to the welded structure

Keywords: FEA, Optimization, casted stator, welded stator, ANSYS

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0315085