The model provided by Indesit is made of a 3D door model of the oven with the actual glass-clamping system. The door is composed by a 3 glass system, mounted on a specific structure that keeps them parallel and separated in order to allow the passage of the air cooling flow. This model was simplified in order to obtain a complete glass-clamp system to reproduce the real door-clamping solution.

The material provided had some elements, such as, chamfer and a non-functional fillet that were  deleted in order to obtain a simplified model that would be easier to analyze. Constraints characteristics and glass geometry were maintained in order to produce an opportunely approximated model.

The study included the following activities:

• creation of a 3D Parametric FEM model using ANSYS
• the definition of the thermal conditions on interior glass, according to experimental temperatures. This was done by building metamodels using modeFRONTIER
• creation of the complete workflow in modeFRONTIER with ANSYS integrated in the workflow
• clamping system optimization by an automated routine defined within modeFRONTIER
• data analysis and selection of the optimal design given the objectives

With the aim of finding an optimal layout of the constraint system that minimizes stresses on the internal glass, the model was parameterized through a series of instructions that allowed modeFRONTIER to manage the geometry and make changes such as to the reciprocal distance and width of the glasses. modeFRONTIER was used to modify the model geometry on each run and to drive the input variables towards the most promising configurations. The results were considered with respect to stress and deformation on the model caused by the thermal gradient applied.