DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING USING B-SPLINE DEVELOPABLE SURFACES

A developable surface can be formed by bending or rolling a planar sur face without stretching or tearing; in other words. it can be develope d or unrolled isometrically onto a plane. Developable surfaces are wid ely used in the manufacture of items that use materials that are not a menable to stretching such as the formation of ducts, shoes, clothing and automobile parts including upholstery and body panels (Frey & Bind schadler 1993). Designing a ship hull entirely of developable surfaces would allow production of the hull using only rolling or bending. Hea t treatment would only be required for removal of distortion, thus gre atly reducing the labor required to form the hull. Although developabl e surfaces play an important role in various manufacturing application s, little attention has been paid to implementing developable surfaces from the onset of a design. This paper investigates novel. user frien dly methods to design complex objects using B-spline developable surfa ces based on optimization techniques. Illustrative examples show the s ubstantial improvements this method achieves over previously developed methods.