A review: virtual assembly of flexible cables based on physical modeling
ISSN: 0144-5154
Article publication date: 4 November 2019
Issue publication date: 30 March 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Cables are widely used, and they play a key role in complex electromechanical products such as vehicles, ships, aircraft and satellites. Cable design and assembly significantly impact the development cycle and assembly quality, which is be-coming a key element affecting the function of a product. However, there are various kinds of cables, with complex geo-metric configurations and a narrow assembly space, which can easily result in improper or missed assembly, an unreasonable layout or interference. Traditional serial design methods are inefficient and costly, and they cannot predict problems in installation and use. Based on physical modeling, computer-aided cable design and assembly can effectively solve these problems. This paper aims to address virtual assembly (VA) of flexible cables based on physical modeling.
Design/methodology/approach
Much research has focused recently on virtual design and assembly-process planning for cables. This paper systematically reviews the research progress and the current state of mechanical models, virtual design, assembly-process planning, collision detection and geometric configuration and proposes areas for further research.
Findings
In the first instance, the main research groups and typical systems are investigated, followed by extensive exploration of the major research issues. The latter can be reviewed from five perspectives: the current state of mechanical models, virtual design, assembly-process planning, collision detection and geometric configuration. Finally, the barriers that prevent successful application of VA are also discussed, and the future research directions are summarized.
Originality/value
This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the topics of VA of flexible cables based on physical modeling and investigates some new ideas and recent advances in the area.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The work in this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51175053 and 51305052) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (3132019352 and 3132019117). The authors thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.
Citation
Du, H., Xiong, W., Wang, H. and Wang, Z. (2020), "A review: virtual assembly of flexible cables based on physical modeling", Assembly Automation, Vol. 40 No. 2, pp. 293-304. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-04-2018-056
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited