A contribution on the optimization strategies based on moving least squares approximation for sheet metal forming design

Computer-aided procedures to design and optimize forming processes are, nowadays, crucial research topics since industrial interest in costs and times reduction is always increasing. Many researchers have faced this research challenge with various approaches. Response surface methods (RSM) are probably the most known approaches since they proved their effectiveness in the recent years. With a peculiar attention to sheet metal forming process design, RSM should offer the possibility to reduce the number of numerical simulations which in many cases means to reduce design times and complexity. Actually, the number of direct problems (FEM simulations) to be solved in order to reach good function approximations by RSM is a key aspect of their application in sheet metal forming operations design. In this way, the possibility to build response surfaces basing on moving least squares approximations (MLS) by utilizing a moving and zooming region of interest can be considered a very attractive methodology. In this paper, MLS is utilized to solve two optimization problems for sheet metal forming processes. The influence on the optimization results was analyzed basing on MLS peculiarities. The idea is to utilize these peculiarities and make the MLS approximation as flexible as possible in order to reduce the computational effort of an optimization strategy. An innovative optimization method is proposed and the results show it is possible to strongly reduce the computational effort of sheet metal forming processes optimization. In particular, the advantages, in terms of computational effort reduction, with respect to classical RSM approaches have been demonstrated and quantified.