Structural Optimization 18, 193 201 @ Springer-Verlag 1999
Finite element analysis and optimization in fixture design
S. K a s h y a p *
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA
kashyap@mach.pr.luceut.com
W . R . DeVries~
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
Abstract Fixturing locating point synthesis considers the
workpiece and the fixturing elements to be rigid, but however
they are elastic and deformable. To ensure sustained quality of
manufacture to meet the design tolerances, fixture design must be
predictably repeatable. This paper is concerned with minimizing
deformation of the workpiece due to machining loads about fixtur-
ing support positions, especially in thin castings. Finite element
analysis is used in simulating the deformation of the workpiece
at selected points. An optimization algorithm is developed to
minimize deflections at these selected nodal points by considering
the support and tool locations as design variables. The result-
ing support locations and tool point designs ensure part support,
kinematic closure and minimal workpiece deflections during ma-
chining.
1 Introduction
Research in fixture design considered the workpiece and the
fixturing elements to be rigid for kinematic analysis. But,
in fact both the workpiece and the fixture are elastic and
deformable. In this paper, the elastic deformation of the
workpieee, primarily normal to the primary reference plane
is of interest. In particular, optimization techniques to min-
imize deflections of the workpiece are outlined that select
positions of the three supports which are in the primary ref-
erence plane. In addition, it is determined whether the phys-
ical properties and cross-section of the locating tool points
are adequate (or rigid) to resist machining forces.
The machining forces and the clamping forces imposed on
the workpiece and the fixturing elements bring about some
deformation in them. Quality of manufacturing is high only
when the workpiece is accurately and rigidly positioned or
it is recursively sensed and compensated for. With these
deformations in the workpiece and fixturing elements, the
quality of manufacture is compromised.
In the past, little analysis work was devoted to the design
of fixtures. With the recent development of new techniques,
software, and mathematical theories, much effort can be ex-
pended beyond design synthesis for locating points. Past re-
search in optimization in fixtures could not handle supports
not necessarily on a single plane. Use of better and faster
* Presently at Lucent Technologies/BellLaboratories Princeton, NJ
t Formerly at RensselaerPolytechnic Institute Troy, NY
optimization techniques and a comparative study of differ-
ent optimization techniques were not employed in fixturing
analysis. In this paper finite element analysis will be used
for assessing the deformation in workpiece and fixturing ele-
ments. Secondly, optimization procedures will be adopted to
minimize these deflections, in addition to determining if the
physical properties and the cross-section of the locating tool
points are adequate to resist the machining forces.
Specifically, the goals for fixture design analysis and op-
timization are as follows.
Describe the FEM methods used in computing the de-
flections in the workpiece and the fixturing elements, and
formulate a finite element model for fixturing analysis.
Treat the fixture design as an optimal design problem by
formulating an objective function to determine the loca-
tion of fixturing supports.
Describe the closed form solutions used to determine the
appropriate cross-section and physical properties of the
locating tool points.
2 P r e v i o u s r e s e a r c h i n f i x t u r i n g f i n i t e e l e m e n t anal-
ysls a n d o p t i m i z a t i o n
One of the requirements of fixturing is that it should limit
elastic deformation of the workpiece. It is important to con-
sider cutting forces as well as clamping forces on workpiece.
A finite element model of the workpiece is created and cut-
ting and clamping forces can be identified and quantified and
their effect on the behaviour of the modelled workpiece de-
termined.
Lee and Haynes (1987) used FEA to minimize fixturing
force/workpiece deflection. They were able to determine the
deflection of a part for a specific fixture assembly. Menassa
and DeVries (1991) further extended this work using fixtur-
ing elements as an elastic body. DeMeter (1996) and Hock-
enberger et al. (1995) formulated micro-displacements at the
workpiece and fixturing element interface with optimization
possibilities. More recently, Cai et al (1996) have approached
this optimization problem for sheet metal fixtures.
194
3 F o r m u l a t i o n of t h e o b j e c t i v e f u n c t i o n
One of the most important technical criteria in machining
fixture design is deflection of the workpiece due to either ma-
chining, and/or clamping (Lee and Haynes 1987). Minimizing
deflections, thus becomes a key point for the fixture design
process to ensure repeated highest quality manufacture. It
becomes necessary to formulate an objective function to take
into effect the worst possible applied manufacturing and as-
sembly/clamping loads on the workpiece deflections.
This is true in many metal working, or assembly opera-
tions. In fabrication, especially in drilling or riveting, deflec-
tions are important. And also for the accuracy in achieving
acceptable tolerances in the manufactured part, and increas-
ing the repeatability of the fixtures workpiece-fixture deflec-
tions are important design constraints. Because of these prac-
tical considerations, the analysis in the following sections is
aimed at determining the positions of the fixture supports
and minimizing the deflection of certain key points on the
workpiece, given the workpiece geometry, material and an
initial fixture layout as determined from the initial fixture
design.
3. I Finite element mesh of lhe workpiece
Mostly prismatic workpieces with some simple curved sur-
faces are chosen for this analysis. The mesh is a tetrahedral
mesh with isotropic material properties. The mesh consists
of N e octant elements and with N p nodal points, as shown in
Fig. 1. There are six tetrahedral elements embedded within
each of the N e octant elements. In many assembly and ma-
chining processes (like drilling, fastening, etc.), the part is
supported on the bottom surface of the workpiece. The 3-2-1
locating principle has three supports that form the primary
plane, since the three points define a plane. Considering a
primary supporting plane that rests on the three flxturing
supports S i (PNT0, PNT1, and PNT2 as shown in Fig. 2).
A point load i~ applied normal to the surface and
translated vertically down is denoted by the vector
P l = (Pzl, P y l , P z l ) T = ( 0 . , 0 . , P z l ) T .
When considering an arbitrary edge, numerical results
have shown the following observations. Maximum deflections
occur at corner nodes Ci and at a node in-between the the
two 'corner nodes. When calculating these deflections with
the FEM, a refined mesh is desired to provide accurate deflec-
tions, but is uneconomical while considering the large number
of tetrahedral elements. Therefore determination of the ex-
act location of the maximum deflection at the middle node
between the two corner nodes Ci, along each edge is not prac-
tical. From FEM simulation results it is observed that when
a load is far from an arbitrary edge, maximum deflection oc-
curs near the mid-edge node and when the load is close to the
arbitrary edge the deflections shifts along the edge towards
the load. Thus it is reasonable to minimize the deflections at
the corner nodes, mid-edge nodes and nodes at the point of
load application, making it possible to minimize deflections
*Figures r e p r e s e n t the default P r o / E N G I N E E R
where the Y-axis is t h e d e p t h
only at a candidate set of nodes to our interest. This leads
to the following conclusions.
9 The effect of arbitrarily positioned load points on a work-
piece causes critical deflections only at the corner nodes,
and the mid-edge nodes.
9 Maximum deflections occur at the nodes at which the
loads are applied.
3.2 Objective function for deflection minimization
The objective function for minimizing the deflections of a
three-dimensional workpiece can formulated from the obser-
vations in the last section. The design problem is to optimally
position the supports, Si, i = 1 , . . . , N S. T h e point of appli-
cation of the load has the large deflection as observed from
the previous section. So the objective function would be to
minimize deflections at these locations ~:i for NP loads, along
with deflections at N c corners denoted by Ci, and at the N rn
mid edge nodes denoted by Mi, where D denotes the deflec-
tion vector. The objective function is given below (Kashyap
1997; Kashyap and DeVries 1997, 1998)
Nc
Fi(D, S) -_ E [ D T ( c i ) W D ( C i ) ] +
i=1
N -~ Np
E(DT[Mi)WD(Mi)] + E[DT(Li)WD(Li)] , (2)
i=1 i=1
Nc N~
Fi(D , s ) = ~ 1115(Ci)[I + Z III5(M~)tE+
i=1 i=1
Np
E IIb(Li)N (3)
i=1
= sum of corner deflections + sum of mid-point deflections
+ sum of load point deflections,
(1)
where [ } ( C i ) , f ) ( g i ) , D ( L i ) in (3) (Menassa and DeVries
1991) are the weighted displacement vectors at the corner,
mid-edge, and the load point node respectively. And W is
the matrix that weighs the importance of deflections in the
three orthogonal directions. The objective function is essen-
tially a quadratic expression.
The objective function in (3) is set up to handle sev
eral load cases simultaneously, which constitutes the prac-
tical cases that might arise such as gang-drilling operations.
Process plans require that the part be manufactured by a
sequence of manufacturing processes requiring many fixture
setups. This is a costly practice as from a practical point of
view since fixtures have to be separately designed, fabricated,
and stored. Also, workpiece have to be refixtured for each op-
eration. This leads to a loss of accuracy in positioning and
increases the lead time in manufacturing if the fixture has to
be fabricated or reconfigured.
c o o r d i n a t e axes The solution is to reformulate (3) to optimize N g loads
simultaneously, in order to generate a single robust location
 195

T y

Tetrahedron < ~
element int

jz

"-4
Octant Element

Fig. 1. Tetrahedral mesh

T freedom and flexibility to choose a choice of nodal deflections,

load cases, and other technical parameters of interest into the
objective function at the user's will. The exact implementa-
tion of this problem will be discussed later in this paper,

II[Fi(D, S)] = E { D ( C i ) , D ( M i ) , D(Li) } . (4)

i=1

Alternatively, the deflection minimization can be defined

as a set of optimum support locations O(si) which results in
a minimum of the objective function value II[Fi(D, S)] as in
(5),
VSk E G k, O(Sk) = rain II[Fi(D,S)], (5)
s~ co(sk)
where G k defines the geometrically feasible solution set as
defined by the bounds on supports S i.
r

Fig. 2. Support positions, corner and mid-edge nodes on the work- 3.2.1 Weighting function selection. Assembly forces like riv-
piece eting are mostly applied normal to the surface of the work-
piece. Under these circumstances the deflections normal to
the surface are most important, while deflections in the work-
design for supports. The new objective function which takes piece plane are neglected, as shown by the matrix in (6),
into effect all of the load cases can be formulated as in equa-
tion (4). In the exact implementation, the user can select O 0 0
nodal deflection visually from the FEM model into the ob-
jective function, or set a threshold on the minimum deforma-
tion needed and choose the nodal deflection exceeding this
minimum deflection into the objective function. The imple-
W=
I0 0
0 0
0
1

Most machining processes, except perhaps for drilling,

(6)

mentation of this problem is such that it gives the user enough even applied vertically on the top surface of the part are
196

usually three-dimensional. As a result the weighting matrix
in this case would be a unity matrix as (7). While the choice
of the weights depend on the application and estimated as-
sembly and machining loads. The objective function in (3)
can be used to determine how to position the supports,
may have to be supported on different regions not necessar-
ily co-planar. To facilitate these requirements, the user can
sketch area/volume bounds on the support location solution
set. These geometric area/volume bounds termed Geomet-
ric Constraint Regions (GCR) can be sketched at the fixture

W=
[ 100 ]
0 1 0 . (7)
design stage on Pro/ENGINEER or at the analysis stage on
Patran 1.4.
In circumstances where there have to be more than two
0 0 1 supports existing within the same geometric constraint re-
gion, the constraints can be treated as inequality constraints
to keep the supports away from each other. Therefore in-
3.2.2 Remeshing. The fixture support locations are design equality constraints are needed to keep at least one degree of
variables for the optimization problem and also constraints freedom for supports S 2 and Sa. Both supports in this case
to the FEM model. The optimtzation algorithm changes the are allowed to have the same x-coordinate but not the same
values of these support locations, the nature of the FEM z-coordinate. In general the constraints can be designed as
problem also changes to become nonlinear. The optimiza- follows:
tion algorithm will not match the already existing nodal val-
ues with the optimum locations. Hence there is a need for xsi=~ij.Xsj, i,j=1,2, ..,N s , i e j , (8)
remeshing the FEM model, but this remeshing can be done
locally such that the FEM node close to the optimized solu- Ysi =13ij "Ysj, i , j = 1,2, . . , N s , i C j (9)
tion is moved to replace the optimally generated node. This
remeshing should not be applied to a rather coarse mesh, be- Zsi=Sij.Zsj, i , j = 1,2, . , N s , i 7~ j (10)
cause as the tetrahedral elements become distorted and the
error in the evaluation of the nodal deflection increases. A where cqj,/3ij , 6ij are termed as support location feasibility
very fine mesh on the other hand is also not suitable since coefficients (SLFC) between zero to one. In practice the lower
it requires excessive CPU time to solve the mesh. For the and the upper bounds on the support locations are not de-
sired since a value of zero will force the supports to exist on
parts studied with surfaces to be machined with a tolerance
of 0.01 inch, we have about three thousand degrees of free- the boundaries of the GCR and a value of one may overlay
dom for good results. We were limited in increasing the num- one support on another.
ber of nodes on the FEM model because of the insufficient The above observation leads to the conclusion that, if
RAM available for processing and solving this FEM problem G k ( S i ) , k = 1,2, 3 defines the feasible space for the support
on a IBM RS6000 work-station using Pro/ENGINEER and locations S k as defined by the optimal locations O ( S k ) , then
Patran 1.4. In cases of machining dies for thin castings with G k are collectively disjoint,
surfaces and designing fixturing for metal stamped parts with
surfaces. It is very critical to maintain dimensional and form VSk e G k ; if O(Sk) N G k ( S i ) # { O } ; then
tolerances. A more accurate representation of the surface can
only be maintained by a finer mesh with increased number G 1 N G 2 r ] G a = {1~}, (11)
of nodes.
In summary, the FEM computes the deflections D j, based
on the loads and constraints from the (3) which can be evalu-
3.3 Geometric constraints
ated for N l load cases. Then the design problem for locating
The objective function consists of the terms given in (3) which supports can be posed as the following optimization problem.
comprise the deflections at the selected nodes expressed as a Given
sum. The objective function needs constraints on the sup-
ports Si, i = 1,... N s, otherwise no deflection will occur as a S i = (Xsi,Ysi,Zsi) T i = 1, . . , N s,
result of placement of supports directly under the load. This
is however undesirable practically, for example in drilling a Ti = ( x t i , Y t i , z t i ) T i = 1, .,N t
through hole because it may result in a hole being made in
the fixture support. An over-hung problem will arise espe-
Pi = (Xpi,Ypi,Zpi) T i = 1, . . , N p,
cially in an airplane panels if the supports 8 i are placed close minimize
to the loads. So therefore this leads to a geometrically feasi- (Sk, k = 1 , . . . , N s) YI(Fi[:DJ' sk)] =
ble region where the supports can be placed providing part
support with no interference with the machining tool. An Nl
optimal solution for the support location can be determined minimize
(12)
for minimum deflection in the workpiece. ( S k , k = 1 , . . . , N s) X - ~ ' 'Z--'ritDj'Sk)
i=1
The constraints to this minimization problem are geomet-
ric in nature. Usually in fixturing assemblies, it becomes nec- Subjected to
essary to support the workpiece with temporary weldment.
As a constraint to this minimization problem, the support Xsi <_c~ij.xsj z,j= 1,2...N S i~k j
locations must not interfere with these weldment or other
features on the fixture/workpiece. In reality the workpiece Ysi <-~Sij'Ysj i,j= 1,2...N S i#j

zsi <_6ij.Zsj i,j=l,2...N S i~j
xsi(MIN ) <_ Zsi <_ x s i ( M A X ) ,
Ysi(MIN) < Ysi < Ysi(MAX),
zsi(MIN) <_ zsi < zsi(MdX ) ,
where T i are the tool point locations, xsi(M[N, MAX),
ysi(MIN, MAX), and zsi(MIN, M A X ) are the lower and
upper bounds as defined by the GCR.
And finally,
o(~+i, vii, z+i)T e B(W),
where B ( W ) is the part boundary of the workpiece.
Alternative formulation. In reality, fixturing beds are ma-
chined with slots, or made up of peg holes for assembly of
r so,+,+ +
fixturing components. These pre-defined locations on fixtur- ,-~ FEM problemII
ing beds can help pose the fixturing optimization problem
as a discrete optimization problem. This simplifies the fix-
turing optimization problem by directly linking the support
locations to the geometric model of the workpiece/fixture,
eliminating the need for performing a FEA. But since there
are no standard fixturing beds of the same type, and since
the research motivation is to develop a CAE tool to monitor
and diagnose deformations during machining. A continuous
objective function in conjunction with finite element analy-
sis is deemed appropriate for this deflection minimization in
general.
4 O p t i m i z a t i o n m e t h o d s , c o d e , a n d implementation
Optimization methods implemented are by the penalty func-
tion methods, sequential programming, and simulated anneal-
ing (Rekaltis et al. 1983). A solution to the example in
this paper was obtained by using the penalty function ap-
proach. These optimization methods were implemented as
C / C + + classes referring to these optimization methods from
the books by Rekaltis et aL (1983), Press et al. (1992), and
Vanderplats (1990). Most of the line searches and matrix
utilities were copied from the book by Press et al. (1992).
These optimization routines are interfaced with Pa-
tran 1.4 through Patran's Command Language (McNeal-
Schwendler Corporation 1995) facilitating design automation
in performing this fixturing optimization. P r o / D E V E L O P
API for P r o / E N G I N E E R was used for developing the fix-
turing design tool. The suite of optimization methods that
are accessible on the main Patran 1.4 menu as a result of this
design automation effort are Interior Penalty Function, Exte-
rior Penalty Function, Method of Multipliers, and Sequential
Quadratic Programming. A schematic of the entire fixturing
design and optimization integration is illustrated in Fig. 3.
A range of values for SLFC's from { 0 , . . . , 1} in increments
of 0.1 are used in performing the post-optimality analysis on
the optimal solution for each support location.
5 F E A a n d d e f l e c t i o n minimization
To illustrate the optimal design methodology for fixture de-
sign analysis, consider two examples using the developed soft-
ware on P r o / E N G I N E E R and Patran. The first example is
197
Pro/ENGINEER
i
| Perform [_ ID o fixturing~l
~anufammb- |
[ Create ~II P.e.rfo.rrn. 1! InteractivelY~lI Applyloads&~
IGe~ & | I mtmmmng | defineboundsll
Y
PATRAN
1 + +
,o:n,%n+++
/Optimize by[_ interactively~l IInteractivelyL-
I define I / derma I
Fig. 3. Schematic of the framework
a fairly simple example of a thin part considered for gang-
drilling operation where four holes have to be drilled simulta-
neously. This example demonstrates how excessive deflection
can be reduced by optimization, this is particularly useful
when thin castings have to be machined. The second ex-
ample is a comprehensive one in that a design of fixture is
sought to handle machining of several holes in a sequence and
milling of a slot. The second example shows how the fixture
design methodology is robust to handle several operations in
a single fixture setup.
5.1 Example 1: drilling four holes simultaneously
This example is a fairly simple problem where a fixture is
designed to drill four holes simultaneously in a thin rectan-
gular Aluminum workpiece (i.e. 4 inches • 3 inches x 0.25
inches). The fixture design process is first to determine the
positions of the locating tool points and the reference data to
machine the workpiece. The positions of these locating tool
points along with machining loads pose as boundary condi-
tions to the finite element model. The positions of the centres
of the four holes and the drilling loads are 0.5 inch from their
respective edges as shown in Fig. 4. The support positions
are optimized to mmimize workpiece deflection based on the
FEM simulation and the optimization procedure developed
in this paper. The constraints on this FEM model being three
fixed displacement constraints on the support locations, the
three tool point locations, and the four load cases.
The elastic properties along with the coordinates of the
sample nodes and the magnitudes of the loads are displayed
in Table 1. In addition Table 1 identifies the constraints for
the optimization process such as GCR and SLFC that are
imposed.
198

L3 Table 2. Results of Example 1, simultaneous drilling

Obj fun / / = 6.63 E-03 in

New obj fun f/* = 0.0
C4 ~ C
Supports N s = 3 S 1 = ( 1.5 in, 1 in, 0 in)
S 2 = ( l i n , 2.5in, 0 i n )
S 3 = ( 3 i n , 2in, 0in)

New supports S~ = ( 0 in, 0.5 in, 0 in)

S~ = ( 0.75 in, 1.5 in, 0 in)
8~ = ( 3.25 in, 3.0 in, 0 in)
Fig. 4. Tool, load and support positions on Example 1
Clamping force fc =175 lbs
Table 1. Values used in optimization for Example 1, simultaneous
drilling
mid-edge nodes ( M i , i = 1 , . . . ,4), and the four load point
nodes (Li, i = 1 , . . . , 4). The values for the displacements at
Workpieee dimensions 4 in x 3 in x 0.25 in
these twelve nodes before optimization and after optimization
are shown in Table 3. A maximum deflection of 0.003 inch
Elastic properties of A1 E = 1.0E7 Psi and u =0.3
was noted at C 1.
Corner nodes, N c - 4 Mid-edge node N m = 4 Table 3. Deflection minimization at sample nodes for Example 1

C1 = (0in, 0in, 0in) MI= (2 in, 0in, 0in)

C2 = ( 4 in, 0 in, 0 in) M2 = (4 in, 1.5 in, 0 in) Deflection 73z Deflection Minimization
C3= (4in, 3in, 0in) M3= (2 in, 3in, 0in)
C4 = ( 0 in, 3 in, 0 in) M4 = (0 in, 1.5 in, 0 in) Sample nodes Before opt After opt

Tool points N t T1 = (0.5 in, 3 in , 0.125 in) C1 -0.28E-2 0.0

T2 = (3.5 in, 3 in, 0.125 in)
T3 = (4 in, 0.5 in, 0.125 in) C2 -0.39E-2 -0.132

Load Nodes & Loads L1 = (0.5 in, 0.5 in, 0.25 in) C3 -0.104E-2 -0.7E-2
L2 = (3.5 in, 0.5 in, 0.25 in)
L3 = (3.5 in, 2.5 in, 0.25 in) C4 -0.53E-2 -0.6E-2
L4 = (0.5 in, 2.5 in, 0.25 in)
P1 = (0, 0,-300 lbf) M1 -0.43E-2 -0.6E-2
P4= P3 = P2 = P1
M2 0.023 0.022
GCR x = 0.75 in, y = 0 i n , z = 0 m
x = 3.25 in, y = 3 i n , z = 0 i n M3 -0.1E-2 -0.151

SLFC c~12 = c~13 = 0.8,/323 = 0.8 M4 -0.0 -0.25E-2

L1 -0.194E-2 -0.349E-3

5.1.1 Simultaneous drilling. Four loads are applied simulta- L2 -0.33E-3 -0.244E-3
neously to both ends of the workpiece and given the locating
tool point locations, the problem is to find the optimal loca- L3 -0.682E-3 -0.357E-3
tions for the supports. Figure 5 displays the vector plot of the
results from the FEM analysis. It can be inferred from the L4 -0.65E-3 -0.259E-3
Fig. 5 that the four simultaneous forces bends the part about
the support locations. Out of the all other penalty function
approachs used, optimization of this particular problem was
most efficient with the method of multipliers. The end results
are shown in Table 2.
5.1.2 Example 2: sequential drilling and milling. This ex-
The objective function for this example is a function of ample is concerned with drilling three holes sequentially, and
twelve nodes, the four corner nodes (Ci, i = 1 , . . . , 4), the four milling a slot in the workpieee. The CAD model with the

Fig. 5. Vector plot of the deformation results for Example 1
forces and constraints attached onto the workpiece are shown
in Fig. 6. The workpieee is made of aluminum with the elas-
tic modulus and a Poisson's ratio of E = 1.0 x 107 ibf/inc 2
and u = 0.3.
0 Fx, - 2 0 0 ~
0 Fx,
0 Fx, -200 Fy,
Fig. 6. Force constraints model for FEA and optimization,
Example 2: sequential drilling and slot milling created on
Pro/ENGINEER
With the reference data and locating tooi points deter-
mined by the initial fixture design, the constraints for solving
the FEM model and the optimization for deflection are ap-
plied. It will be shown that an optimal configuration can be
achieved that further minimizes the objective function. The
FEM mesh for the workpiece in example two is as shown in
Fig. 1. The milling force is applied to the entire face of the
slot floor after calculating the average force for the resultant
199
.003405
.003178
.002951
.(X)2724
.002497
.002270
.002043
.001816
.001589
.001362
.001135
.0009080
.0OO6810
.0004540
.0002270
forces for the tangential and the radiai components. The in-
formation about the cutting conditions for machining the slot
are given Table 4. Because of these assumptions about the
physical problems, like loads applied to the arbitrary posi-
tions to the surface, the weighting matrix in (7) is used in
calculating the objective function (2). Since the loads that
are assumed to be the result of drilling holes through the
Aluminum, the supports should not be directly under them.
For this reason, the GCR are defined to be a rectangular
area where the supports are located, the values of which are
shown in Table 4. In this study two of the supports 81, S 2
can share the same value for the x coordinate, but must be
separate in their y coordinates. For this reason, inequality
constraints are used to keep supports '-'r and S 2 away from
each other. The SLFC's Ctl2 = c~13 = 0.8 will limit support
81 in the X-direction to 80 % of the X-coordinate of $2 and
83, fl2a = 0.8 will limit support 82 in the y-direction to 80
% of the distance of support 83, since all the supports are in
the same plane 6i = 1.0. These values are all shown in Ta-
ble 4. The selection of these constraints depend on practical
considerations, for example, the size of a support will limit
how close the supports can be to each other.
In order to demonstrate the robustness of this optimiza-
tion scheme consider drilling of three holes on the part and
milling of a slot on the workpiece one after another. The
objective is to minimize deflection considering all these ma-
chining loads by finding an optimal location for the supports
for all of these machining loads considered simultaneously.
Table 5 summarizes the numerical values used to represent
these loads and their locations along the initial support po-
sitions.
200

Table 4. Example 2: sequential drilling and slot milling values Table 5. Numerical values for drilling and milling considered su-
optimization multaneously

Workpiece envelope (10 in x 10 in x 5 in) Load point nodes & load L1 = (1.0 in, 0 in, 1.0 in)
L2 =( 1.0 in ,0 in, 9.0 in)
Elastic properties of A1 E = 1.0E7 Psi & u = 0.3 L3 = (5.0 in, -2.0 in, 5.0 in)

Corner nodes, N c = 4 Mid-edge nodes, N m = 4 Drilling force P1 = ( 0, -200 lbf, 0 )

Cutter specification
Cutting conditions
C1 = (0 in, 0 in, 0in)
C2 - (0 in, 0 in, 10in)
C3 = (10in, 0in, 10in)
C4 = (10 in, 0 in, 0in)
Tool points, N T =3
P2 = P3 = P1
Diameter = 0.25 in
Number of teeth N t = 4 Milling force (203 lbf, -128 lbf, -358 lbf)
Helix angle = 0 degrees
Objective function II o = 2.303E-0.3 in
f = 30 ipm New objective function H* = 1.624E-03
N = 550 rpm
b = 0.25 in Supports, N S = 3 301 = (2.5 in, -5 in, 5 in)
S~ = (2.5 in,-5 in, 7.5 in)
M1 = (0 in, 0 in, 5 in) s~, = ( 7 . 5 in, -5 in, 7.5 in)
M2 = (4 i n , - 2 in, 10 in) New supports, N S = 3 S~ = (0 in,-5 in, 2 in)
M3= (10in, 0in, 5 i n ) S~ = (6 in,-5 in, 0 in)
M4 = (4 i n , - 2 in, 0 in) 8~ = (6 in,-5 in, 6 in)
T1 = (10 in, -2.5 in, 7.5 in) Clamping force fc = 600 lbs
T2 = (10 in, -2.5 in, 2.5 in)
T3 = (2.5 in, -2.5 in, 0 in)

GCR Sl(X ) = [6, 10] in, Sl(Z ) =[6,10] in
S2(x ) = [6, 10] in, S2(z ) =[0,4] in
S3(x ) = [0, 4] in, S3(z ) =[2,6] in
SLFC's a12 = ~13 = 0.8
323 = 0.8,51[i = 1,2,3] = 1.0
The effect of the drilling, milling, and clamping forces on
the workpiece about the support locations causes the work-
piece to deform as shown by the vector plot in Fig. 7. This
effect of deformation is reduced by finding the new locations
for the supports by optimization. In this case, an optimal
solution is found that minimizes the objective function by
30%. There are situations in solving this minimization prob-
lem where multiple manufacturing loads are applied simul-
taneously. It has not been possible to minimize all the de-
flections although the objective function value has decreased.
Table 5 shows a case where the compromise solution has a
large objective function value. This problem could be re-
solved in two ways. Firstly, if automatic fixtures are used
and thus fixturing components should be able to move to dif-
ferent configurations while machining. Secondly, perhaps ad-
ditional supports or supports with different geometries could
be used. The latter is an area for future research.
6 Conclusions
This paper described a method of analysing and optimizing
a fixture design for minimal workpiece deflection during ma-
chining. Given the nature of machining loads and the com-
plexities on the geometry, both the finite element analysis and
optimization procedures are nonlinear; necessitating efficient
nonlinear optimization techniques to be used in minimizing
the deflection in the workpiece. Also, to ensure part stability,
and fixturing tool points and machining tool noninterference
geometric constraint regions for each support were developed.
The tool points were designed to withstand about 20% of the
maximum machining load possible in the three coordinate di-
rections. The examples demonstrated the robustness of the
procedure by considering cases of simultaneous drilling and
milling loads that would occur in a practical situation. In
cases tested the optimization reduced the workpiece deflec-
tion by the order of 30% from the initial deflection. The al-
gorithm was implemented by customizing Patran 1.4 to per-
form fixture analysis and optimization. The initial fixture
design was performed by customizing Pro/ENGINEER. It is
the belief of the authors that the developed work can aid
in reducing lead time in design of fixtures ensuring higher
quality of manufactured parts.
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