Special Issue Article
Advances in Mechanical Engineering
2016, Vol. 8(4) 1–9
Ó The Author(s) 2016
Computer-aided design and simulation DOI: 10.1177/1687814016644385
aime.sagepub.com
of strip layout for progressive die
planning using Petri nets
Hussein Mohamed A Hussein1, Shailendra Kumar2 and
Emad S Abouel Nasr1,3
Abstract
Planning of strip layout is one of the important activities of progressive die design in sheet metal industries. The optimum
and economical die design mainly depends on the design of strip layout. Many methodologies are used to determine
optimum strip layout, but there is no literature available for strip-layout simulation. Petri net is one of the most suitable
methodologies for simulation of strip layout. In this article, two research contributions are described (1) to apply the
visual Petri net to simulate the sequential workstations in the strip layout of part and (2) to integrate the parametric
design of strip layout and simulation using Petri-net technique. To demonstrate the present research contribution, two
case studies are also discussed.
Keywords
Sheet metal, strip layout, progressive die, Petri net
Date received: 3 November 2015; accepted: 21 March 2016
Academic Editor: ZhiWu Li
Introduction dimensions (2D) including shearing operations. This
model includes 5 shearing stations, 16 places, and 8
The planning of strip layout is the first activity of die transitions. Later on Lin and Horng3 extended their
design process. The decision made during strip-layout work to include shearing operations in three dimen-
planning plays a vital role not only in the design of pro- sions (3D). The model includes 12 stations, 25 places,
gressive die but also economical production of defect- and 17 transitions. Lin and colleagues1,3 used the dis-
free sheet metal parts. The progressive die design is a crete technique in their work. Chu et al.4 used graph
complex, time-consuming, error-prone, and highly method for strip-layout design of progressive die. This
experience-based activity.1 The degree of complexity of
progressive die design increases with the increase in
1
number of die stations. The process of strip layout has Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Helwan
University, Cairo, Egypt
many stages, including design, process planning, opti- 2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, S. V. National Institute of
mization, simulation, and verification. Many research- Technology, Surat, India
ers have applied efforts to develop computer-aided 3
Industrial Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Saud
systems for strip-layout planning of progressive die. University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
For example, Ngoi and Chua2 applied the knowledge-
Corresponding author:
based approach to describe the strip-layout features, Hussein Mohamed A Hussein, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
design, and planning. Lin et al.1 studied the application Faculty of Engineering, Helwan University, Cairo 11732, Egypt.
of Petri net (PN) in strip-layout planning in two Email:
[email protected] Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without
further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/
open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
approach incorporates rules and heuristics used by Nowadays, commercial computer-aided design
human process planning experts and synthesizes the (CAD) systems are being used worldwide for part mod-
reasoning process using graph theoretic algorithms. eling, unfolding, and nesting. But design of strip layout
Chang et al.5 applied genetic algorithm (GA) technique is still done manually by experienced die designers.
for design of strip layout. Kumar and colleagues6,7 Only few studies have been reported in the literature
developed an intelligent system to design the strip lay- for automation of design of strip layout.7 In sheet metal
out for progressive die parametrically. industries, it is still believed that design of strip layout
The PN methodology can be used in modeling, is an art rather than a science. Recent advances in
simulation, and performance analysis of strip-layout CAD and artificial intelligence (AI) have given oppor-
planning. tunity to the researchers to develop automated systems
In this study, two research contributions are with built-in intelligence to ease complexity in progres-
described. A visual PN code called ‘‘HPSim’’ is con- sive die design including strip layout.
structed to simulate the strip-layout design of the
designed workstations. This strip-layout system has
used the continuous technique inside PN. The second PNs
contribution is the development of an integrated system PNs are a mathematical and graphical modeling tool
to integrate the parametric strip-layout design as pre- applicable to many systems. It is first suggested by Carl
pared by Kumar and colleagues6,7 and the PN simula- Petri in 1962 during his PhD work. It was used for
tion module. This integrated system is built on the modeling, simulating, and analyzing the discrete event
platform of AutoCAD software. Two case studies are dynamic systems. Now, it is an important tool for
taken from the work of Kumar and colleagues6,7 to studying and describing information processing systems
demonstrate the present contributions. that are characterized as being asynchronous, concur-
rent, parallel, distributed, nondeterministic, and/or sto-
chastic. A PN or place/transition net N is a four-tuple
Strip layout (P, T, F,W) where P and T are finite, non-empty sets,
It involves laying out the material strip of sheet metal and disjoint sets. P is a set of places, and T is a set of
to be passed through the eccentric press in order to pro- transitions, elements belonging. The basic concepts of
duce stamping parts exactly as per the part design. It PN and the advantages of using PN in the construction
also determines the number of working and idle work- of system modeling and simulation are described in
stations, punched, blanked, bent, or formed features at detail by Lin et al.,1 Lin and Chua,3 Peterson,8 and Li
each workstation and the operation sequence at each and colleagues.9,10 For the details of PNs, the reader is
workstation of progressive die. The productivity, accu- referred to the study by Li and Zhou.11 PNs have found
racy, cost, and quality of progressive die as well as sheet their extensive application in, control,11 modeling,12
metal parts that will be produced depend to large extent particularly deadlock control,13–16 scheduling,12,15,17–23
on strip-layout planning. Therefore, the design of strip and performance analysis18,19 of resource allocation
layout is considered as one of the important activities systems, particularly flexible manufacturing systems.24–27
of progressive die design. The design of strip layout is a Note that when PNs are used to model a resource alloca-
part of process planning of die design. The process tion system, they are two modeling paradigms: resource-
planning of progressive die design involves the follow- oriented Petri nets (ROPNs)19–22 and process-oriented
ing three steps: Petri nets (POPNs).12 The former can usually provide a
convenient and compact model compared with the latter.
1. Unfolding the 3D sheet metal stamping part However, the POPNs are used by more researchers than
into a flat pattern; ROPNs.28–32
2. Nesting of parts to maximize the strip
utilization;
Planning of shearing-cut strip layout using
3. Deciding the number of stations on progressive
die and sequence of operations on each worksta- Petri-net approach
tion. This is termed as strip layout. The bottom-up synthesis method of PN is more suitable
for planning the workstations of progressive die for
On the basis of strip layout, the progressive die is to shearing operations. The reason is that for the bottom-
be designed and manufactured. Progressive die is an up method construction, each subsystem (i.e. single
assembled unit of various components such as die punching die workstation) is typical and actual solid
block, punches (piercing, blanking, etc.), pilots, pitch equipment in the real world. Thus, corresponding rela-
punches, punch plate, strippers, guide plates, die-set, tionship of each subsystem merging with the entire sys-
and fasteners. tem will be more direct.
Hussein et al. 3
Figure 1. Single punching station’s working process.
Steps of the PN graph construction for shearing-cut
strip layout for progressive die workstation are follows:
the state of this level (subsystem) is the actual single
punching station equipment in an actual factory (single
die’s workstation) as shown in Figure 1. Analysis of the
movement operation sequence and changes of condi-
tions of these single punching stations can establish the
PN graph of these stations. In the primary PN graph,
all places are state places denoting the working condi- Figure 2. Sheet metal part (all dimensions are in mm).6
tions. The flow of tokens represents changes of the
punching state of the working of a die workstation.
The upper-level control center mainly connects the amount of the upper and lower dies’ displacement to
operation of all working stations inside the lower level avoid unbalanced moment on the right and the left
and monitors working conditions of various working sta- sides during the working process of the shearing-cut
tions. Therefore, the reason why the primary PN of this progressive dies.
control center can be established is mainly based on the
functions that can be executed by the subsystems and the
analysis of their output and input parameters. The con- Case Studies
struction of the primary PN of this control center mainly
relies on the function that can be executed by subsystems Case study 1
and the analysis of the input and output conditions. The Description of PN in a strip layout. Figure 2 shows the sheet
primary PN graph of the control center is also the basis of metal part and Figure 3 depicts the strip layout auto-
reference base of the system’s control logic. matically generated by the intelligent system as pro-
The so-called communication place denotes the basis posed by Kumar and Singh.7
of communication with the upper and lower levels. Figure 4 shows the PN graph of the places represen-
These communication places appear at all die worksta- tation. There are five places in Figure 4(a) and two
tions and the PN graph of the upper level in pairs. transitions in Figure 4(b). Describing the working
These pairs represent response of the conditions of the actions of a punch press is shown in Figure 4(b). It
various levels in the system. Tokens of the communica- should be noted that a punch press machine means a
tion places can flow between the upper and lower levels die workstation at this time. When a punch press
in the PN graph to denote the condition of message machine is idle, p1 sends an order. Therefore, p1 is also
communication during the workstation of the shearing- called a communication place. When the punch press
cut progressive die. machine is idle and a message arrives (p2 and p4 have
The so-called compensation for upper and lower tokens), the punch press machine begins to punch the
dies offset displacement exist for the following reason. workpiece (st means that t1 is fired). At this moment,
During the working process of tile shearing-cut pro- tokens start to shift. After the tokens of p1, p2, and p4
gressive die, the imbalance between the torque on both are shifted out, it means that the punch press machine
sides along the upper and lower tiles causes an offset is not idle. When a token is shifted to p3, it means that
displacement. The communication of compensation the punch press machine is processing a workpiece, as
message serves its command delivery and response of shown in Figure 4(c). At last, t2 is fired as shown in
condition to let designers change the initial design Figure 4(d), which also signifies that the punch press
according to the scale of the upper and lower die offset machine has finished the punch work.
displacement. The communication of a compensation At this time, tokens are shifted. The token of p3 is
message can deliver its orders and report the states. shifted out and the tokens are shifted to places p2, p4,
Designers can change the initial design based on the and p5. Place p5 indicates the completion of punch
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 3. Strip layout for the sheet metal part (Figure 2).6
Figure 4. PN of the places representation: (a) representation of places, (b) initial working state of a single punching station, (c) PN
graph after the firing of t1, and (d) PN graph after the firing of t2.
work while p4 reports to the system of initial state that mentioned above, the working process of a simple
indicates the punch press machine is idle at this time. punch press machine) are established, the bottom-up
When p1 sends an order (input of information con- synthesis method introduced earlier is applied to
cerning workpiece to be punched), another new cycle is expand the working conditions of various workstations
initiated by the firing of various places and transitions. into a complete structural graph of the shearing-cut
After the primary PN graphs of sub-levels (such as progressive die working system.
Hussein et al. 5
Figure 5. The visual PN for the continuous technique for strip layout (case study 1).
Figure 6. Sheet metal part.6
In this example, a shearing-cut progressive die work-
ing system containing five workstations is considered.
At this time, the workstation likes the major construc-
tion of a simple punch press work, where the first Figure 7. Strip layout of a typical sheet metal part shown in
workstation does the guiding hole punching and the Figure 6.6
other workstations are for punching and blanking.
After passing through five workstations, the workpiece
goes out from the last station and the shearing-cut pro- sequence of continuous PN technique which represents
gressive die working is completed; Figure 5 shows the the strip-layout working.
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 8. The visual PN for the discrete technique for strip layout.
Case study 2
Figure 7 shows the strip layout for a typical sheet metal part
shown in Figure 6 which taken from the work of Kumar.6
The PN graph of this strip layout is illustrated in Figure 8.
PetriCAD for strip layout
AutoCAD customization and programming have wide Figure 9. The Petri net items in the PetriCAD module.
applications in many engineering applications. The
power of AutoCAD comes from its 2D drafting mod- constructed in this study. The ISSLD module generates
ule. The visual Petri-net program represents the net- strip layout automatically in the drawing editor of
work also in 2D drafting. Also the Petri-net application AutoCAD software. The data input for ISSLD module
for strip-layout simulation uses small part of the is the 2D part drawing. The module also stores its out-
Petri-net possibilities. Kumar6 has developed a put data such as number of stations, detail of opera-
computer-aided system for automatic strip-layout tions performed at each station, punch number, punch
design for progressive dies. The system is constructed dimension in a data file, and 2D drawing of strip layout
using AutoCAD software. Adding the PN as an extra in a drawing file.
module to the automated strip layout will certainly The developed PetriCAD module receives its input
enhance the capability of the system. The next section from the output data file of ISSLD module. The mod-
discusses about AutoCAD programming and customi- ule is connected with script file which include a number
zation to be a Petri-net module for strip layout. of circles which denote ‘‘places,’’ lines and arrows
which denote ‘‘transition,’’ closed donuts which denote
‘‘tokens,’’ and text to be inserted beside each place with
The system description the name of operation. The script file is connected with
The proposed system integrates intelligent system for AutoLISP, which receive the data file and reconstruct
strip-layout design (ISSLD) module developed by the number of station on the AutoCAD screen using a
Kumar6 and the new module which called ‘‘PetriCAD’’ simple loop. The AutoLISP includes some of the PN
Hussein et al. 7
Figure 10. The discrete simulation steps for case study 2 based on PetriCAD module.
Figure 11. The continuous simulation steps for case study 2 based on PetriCAD module.
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
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