• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1996.11a
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• pp.548-554
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• 1996

A new method to locate modular fixtures using an optimization technique is proposed. The optimal fixture arrangement is derived to minimize the elastic deformation of a workpiece. That is, a fixture arrangement is regarded better if it minimized the elastic deformation of the workpiece while fixing a workpart of course. In this approach, the workpiece is projected into two dimensional domain to simplify the 3-dimensional fixture arrangement problem into 2-dimensional one. Thus the problem is reduced to find the optimal positions of one horizontal clamp and three locators which minimize the total deformation of the workpiece and the design variables are the location of the contact points between the boundary of the workpiece and the 4-fixels. The Genetic Algorithm is used for the optimization by mapping each design variables to a gene of a chromosome. The fitness value is the total strain energy of the workpiece calculated by the fin element analysis.