Knowledge based engineering and modern CAE for sorting systems

Focusing on modern engineering technologies – as known from automotive sector – the authors
will present two promising approaches to straighten (CAD)-development tasks for sorting systems.
As sorting systems are highly customized products, there are lots of repeating tasks, which steal creativity potential from the design engineer for so called “donkey work”. Here the KBE approach is presented as a powerful instrument in the use of system design, without automating every single detail, but interconnecting available parametric models with layout planning. Different views on engineering task automation are made to make accurate biddings in an early design stage. The authors introduce their KBx approach and will bring insights in ongoing research, to handle KBE and KBx tasks with software, using the xKBE-methodology, that brings together data, information and knowledge from various sources
in the desired quality at the right stage in the developing process.
To boost sorting capacity the exact knowledge of the physical behaviour of sorting goods is essential.
Sorting system development is highly empiric and therefore time consuming and expensive. CAE
techniques offer a wide range of parameter variations within a validated model, to search for
optimization potentialities such as minimizing the distance between the good, ensuring correct handling anyway. The authors will present a Multibody Simulation of a tilt-tray sorter which is used for improved unloading point design. An overview over CAE techniques complements the paper