Optimal Design for Springback of Automotive Panel Forming with Kriging Model

The sheet metal forming method is often used in automotive panels, which will face springback defects that seriously affects the quality of parts. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the impact of springback defects in early design stage in order to optimize the design scheme. Aiming at this problem, firstly the finite element model of automobile panel is established and its forming process is simulated. Then sensitivity analysis method is used to select the factors that have great influence on the forming quality of automobile panel, and Box-Behnken design method is used to gain locally distributed test sample points. Afterwards an approximate model based on Kriging model theory is established. The response is predicted for the finite element method. Finally, the minimization of springback is taken as the optimal objective, combined with Kriging approximation model, and the genetic algorithm is used to optimize the design scheme with the help of MBC (Model-Based Calibration) toolbox of MATLAB software. The optimization result proves the effectiveness of the proposed method. The springback of the optimal design is 74.43% less than that of the initial design, and the forming quality is improved significantly.