Material flow

About: Material flow is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3050 publications have been published within this topic receiving 36844 citations. The topic is also known as: material stream.

Supply chain management: a multi-agent system for collaborative production planning

Abstract: The need for coordinated material flow in supply chains is essential for the competitiveness of manufacturing firms. A hierarchical coordination is not applicable for each supply chain. A collaboration between entities is required to meet future challenges. Besides appropriate planning concepts an IT solution is a major challenge. Multi-agent systems (MAS) are an enabler for a decentralized coordination process. The evolvement of appropriate planning methods makes MAS interesting for collaborative supply chain management (SCM). Nevertheless, the user should be seen as the supply chain engineer, holding the knowledge to create the collaborative supply chain processes. Therefore, the user has to be integrated in the IT solution. A configurable MAS, based on generic components, satisfies this requirement so that MAS can easily be adapted to the changing processes and environment by the user. This paper presents a concept of a configurable MAS and a prototype of a MAS-Editor for collaborative production planning.

Strategies for numerical simulation of linear friction welding of metals: a review

Abstract: Linear friction welding (LFW) is a solid-state joining process used to weld non-axisymmetric components. Material joining is obtained through the reciprocating motion of two specimens undergoing an axial force. During this process, the heat source is determined by the frictional work transformed into heat. This results in a local softening of the material and plays a key role in the onset of the bonding conditions. In this paper, a critical analysis of the different approaches used to simulate the LFW processes is provided. The focus of the paper is the comparison of different modeling strategies and the most relevant outputs available, i.e. temperature, strain and stress distribution, material flow, axial shortening and residual stress. Major issues arising due to the complexity of the process are discussed, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

Deformation in micro roll forming of bipolar plate

Abstract: Micro roll forming is a new processing technology to produce bipolar plates for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) from thin stainless steel foil. To gain a better understanding of the deformation of the material in this process, numerical studies are necessary before experimental implementation. In general, solid elements with several layers through the material thickness are required to analyse material thinning in processes where the deformation mode is that of bending combined with tension, but this results in high computational costs. This pure solid element approach is especially time-consuming when analysing roll forming processes which generally involves feeding a long strip through a number of successive roll stands. In an attempt to develop a more efficient modelling approach without sacrificing accuracy, two solutions are numerically analysed with ABAQUS/Explicit in this paper. In the first, a small patch of solid elements over the strip width and in the centre of the "pre-cut" sheet is coupled with shell elements while in the second approach pure shell elements are used to discretize the full sheet. In the first approach, the shell element enables accounting for the effect of material being held in the roll stands on material flow while solid elements can be applied to analyse material thinning in a small discrete area of the sheet. Experimental micro roll forming trials are performed to prove that the coupling of solid and shell elements can give acceptable model accuracy while using shell elements alone is shown to result in major deviations between numerical and experimental results.

Method for producing internally or externally profiled rings and arrangement therefor

Abstract: In a method for manufacturing internally and/or externally profiled rings from pipe material or solid material, machine-cutting processes and forming processes are combined with one another sequentially, parallel, or sequentially and parallel, wherein one of the forming processes is roll forming. During roll forming a counterforce is generated relative to a flow direction of the starting material so that a material flow in at least one of an axial direction and a radial direction of the starting material is controlled such that flowing material is integrated into a profile to be shaped on the ring.