Parameterized Model of Hydraulic Cylinder
Company: JSC "Eletsgidroagregat"
Industry: Mini-CAD
Project Description
The main objective set for this project was to design an optimal unification of parts and the hydraulic cylinder as a whole, reducing the complexity and cost of designing hydraulic cylinders, as well as automation of engineering documentation design.
It is not possible to parameterize design that has no unification. Therefore, the first task, which was resolved in the process of the work, was unification of parts, assemblies and cylinders in general. At the beginning mounting seats for supporting and sealing elements were unified. This led to reduction in the number of parts such as the piston and the front cover, since the same groove defined at unification may be used not only for support-sealing elements from different manufacturers, but also consider various degrees of loading. In addition such unification reduced the number of support-sealing elements and enabled to create a list of interchangeable parts for the purchasing department.
Unification of joining parts together has led to reduction in types of connecting elements of parts and possibility of their parameterization. For example, when entering diameter of the cylinder designer does not think about the nature or dimensions of welding or back cover pressing parameters.
To start the model parameterization it was first necessary to determine which cylinders can be combined into a single model. The result of this analysis was reduction of 44 consumer-type cylinders to only 6 parametric types, which correspond to the number of parameterized models.
Each model is not linear, and provides possibility to select from several types for each element it is composed. The initial stage of study for parameterized 3D-cylinder model was creation of library of parameterized parts for cylinder assembly. For each part a parameterized model was created with connection to databases of values and mating options.
To reduce the number of models without losing the necessary diversity one single 3D model was used for various configurations of parts. In addition, the task was not to "overload" model with excessive variety. For example, piston was implemented in 2 models that cover 6 types of pistons.
