Optimal design of weld pattern in sheet metal assembly based on a genetic algorithm

In the sheet metal assembly process, welding operations join two or more sheet metal parts together. Since sheet metals are subject to dimensional variation resulting from manufacturing randomness, a gap may be generated at each weld pair prior to welding. These gaps are forced to close during the welding operation and accordingly undesirable structural deformation results. Optimizing the welding pattern (the number and locations of weld pairs) in the assembly process was proven to improve significantly the quality of the final assembly. This paper presents a genetic-algorithm-based optimization method to search automatically for the optimal weld pattern so that assembly deformation is minimized. The application result for a real industrial part demonstrated that the proposed algorithm effectively achieved the objective.