The robust optimisation of metal forming processes

Robustness, reliability, optimisation and Finite Element simulations are of major importance to improve product quality and reduce costs in the metal forming industry. In this paper, we review several possibilities for combining these techniques and propose a robust optimisation strategy for metal forming processes. The importance of including robustness during optimisation is demonstrated by applying the robust optimisation strategy to an analytical test function: for constrained cases, deterministic optimisation will yield a scrap rate of about 50% whereas the robust counterpart reduced this to the required 3 c reliability level.