Improved design of single-layered wire strand for combined tensile and crimping application with meshing optimization

Faced with increasing competition in the global automotive market, reducing costs and design time has become a major focus of development among manufacturers. Faced with these needs, the numerical simulation of shaping processes has become an essential tool. It saves considerable time in the upstream phase of a project by reducing the number of experimental campaigns on prototypes. The studied mechanical system consists mainly in a part crimping at one end of a multi-stranded wire rope, which is stressed in tension. In order to reduce calculation time, it is important to get the optimal meshing parameters which provide a high accuracy. In this paper, a numerical model of a single layered wire rope is studied. The objective is to determine the optimal size and shape of meshing elements to get both accurate and fast results. First of all, the wire strand is investigated in tension and compared with the analytical formulation by G.Costello. Then, the organized wire strand is investigated in crimping process. The process reveals an optimal solution for wire strand structure with a 95% reduction of computation time without losing accuracy. This model is then used to simulate the behavior of a strand in one of the first_ever combined crimping-tensile test in order to obtain a minimal crimping length. This work can be very important for designers to reduce considerably the calculation time of their numerical models while guarantying a great accuracy in the mechanical behavior of a wire rope. Keywords: Wire rope, Finite element simulation, meshing process, Optimization, Mesh elements parameters optimization, Single-layered wire strand numerical model, Wire strand optimal mesh parameters, Wire rope crimping simulation, Tensile stressed wire strand