Establishing manufacturing effort models to be used in optimization of extruded aluminum profiles under structural and manufacturing criteria

As the manufacturing effort is often one of the major drivers in structural design, the paper discusses the development and application of a manufacturing effort model (MEM) for aluminum extrusion, representing fuzzy expert: knowledge on the process.. The MEM is verified through a comparison with design guidelines for extrusion. The geometrical effects on manufacturing efforts described in the guidelines match with the results generated by the MEM for varying cross-sectional shapes. In order to calculate the input parameters for the MEM, an advanced parameterization method for arbitrary cross-sections is used. Such MEMs can be used as a decision basis for the designer or they can be included into structural optimization in order to find Pareto optimal solutions, representing the experts' preference of structural vs. manufacturing criteria. The results based on the developed method and its applications show that the interaction between structural and manufacturing aspects can be considered effectively even in early design phases.