Smart Connection Technology Framework – AI-based Creation of Connection Technology Elements

Automotive product development and the manufacture of automotive products are subject to a series of individual development and production steps. One of these production steps is the assembly of the individual components using suitable connection techniques to create the entire BIW (body in white). However, before the appropriate connection processes can be applied, they must be defined in a series of development steps. Each connection technology element must be created (by CAD support), tested (by CAE support) and is subjected to several CAM-related criteria. Which connection technology element is best suited to join two or more components depends on several factors, including the material pairing. This means that CAD engineers must consider a variety of parameters in order to select the appropriate connection technique variant. Considering that modern BIWs require several thousand connection elements to assemble the entire BIW, we are talking about an enormous manual effort. This currently standardized procedure has two main disadvantages. Firstly, an enormous number of resources (time, costs, manpower, etc.) is required to create all the connection technology elements of the BIW in CAD environments. Secondly, the manual creation of several thousand connection technology elements can lead to a relatively high failure rate. For both disadvantages shown, the automatic creation of connection technology elements in CAD environments can be used as a remedy. With the help of AI-based approaches and several available parameters, a suggestion for the CAD engineer should be offered as to which connection technique variant is the most efficient for the given conditions. In a further step, CAE- and CAM-based models, parameters, and values could also be included in this prediction and further increase the efficiency in the process of the automatic creation of connection technology elements.