Optimising fracture in automotive tail cap by firefly algorithm

Deep drawing is a manufacturing process in which sheet metal is progressively formed into a three-dimensional shape through the mechanical action of a punch forming the metal inside die. The flow of metal is complex mechanism. Pots, pans for cooking, containers, sinks, automobile body parts such as panels and gas tanks are among a few of the items manufactured by deep drawing. Uniform strain distribution in forming results in quality components. The predominant failure modes in sheet metal parts are springback, wrinkling and fracture. Fracture or necking occurs in a drawn part, which is under excessive tensile loading. The prediction and prevention of fracture depends on the design of tooling and selection of process parameters. Firefly algorithm is one of the nature inspired optimisation algorithms and is inspired by firefly's behaviour in nature. The proposed research work presents novel approach to optimise fracture in automotive component-tail cap. The optimisation problem has been defined to optimise fracture within the constraints of radius on die, radius on punch and blank holding force. Fire fly algorithm has been applied to find optimum process parameters. Numerical experimentation has been conducted to validate the results.