engleski

OPTIMISATION OF A SOFA FRAME IN THE INTEGRATED CAD-CAE ENVIRONMENT

Majority of manufacturers of upholstered furniture design construction frames on the basis of craftsman’s intuition and imitation rather than on the basis of engineer practice. The objective of this study was to present a method for the dimension suboptimisation of cross-section diameters of a sofa frame construction and to demonstrate the need for virtual prototyping of upholstered furniture in an integrated computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided engineering (CAE) environments. The concept of the performed investigations assumed the need to select sub-optimal dimensions of cross sections and thicknesses of the construction constituent elements of a two-person sofa frame on the basis of numerical calculations of developed solid models. However, undertaking appropriate steps towards the planned construction sub-optimisation required carrying out strength tests in order to verify the suitability of models developed in the environment of the finite element method. Corroboration of the satisfactory quality of the results of these calculations allowed proposing cross sections of reduced dimensions and next to manufacture an experimental construction of sufficient rigidity and strength in industrial applications. It was demonstrated on the basis of the performed experiments that the proposed dimensions of the main construction elements put forward following the performed sub-optimisation decreased beech wood consumption by 36% and that of particle board – by 25%. Reduced dimensions of the most important construction elements did not result in a significant decrease of the stiffness and strength of the sofa frame.

furniture; optimisation; numerical analysis; CAD; CAE

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