Knowledge Management Strategy and Tactics for Forging Die Design Support

Abstract

The design tasks of cold forged products are very important because they have a great influence on the quality of the final products and the life of the forging dies. However, the design expertise required for the design tends to get scattered and lost, and therefore there is a need for a framework that will enable the accumulation, utilization and evolution of this expertise. The authors have been developing a knowledge-based system to support process planning and the design of dies and die-sets for cold forged products. The knowledge base contains design knowledge on cold forging, which is systematized based on the formal definition of die design problems and on methods with high generality for resolving these problems. These features facilitate the improvement of product quality using an exhaustive search of process plans and die structures, and the improvement of design performance by automating the design work. They also make it easier to pass on and evolve expertise by allowing design experts to self audit and maintain their own knowledge base. The proposed system has been applied to several cold forged products. Experiments show that it can generate multiple forging process plans, dies, and die-sets based on the design knowledge, and that feasible solutions can be obtained within a practical time span.