Una metodologia per la progettazione assistita dal calcolatore di manufatti in porcellana fine

Fine porcelain products get their peculiar characteristics at the end of their thermal process. During the firing a considerable amount of the material mass becomes viscous and the objects lose their shape due to their own weight. The activity purpose is to devise a methodology which should be used in porcelain products design; such methodology has been implemented into a software tool capable of automatically detect the shape of the raw-product on the basis of the CAD model of the finished-product. The research consists of three parts. During the first one an extensive experimental campaign has been carried out in order to characterize the material behaviour during the heat treatment; by the experimental data a numerical model of the material behaviour has been built. In the second one the reliability of the model has been tested by means of a set of direct FEM simulations of the industrial firing process. In the end, during the third part, inverse process FEM simulations are performed. These simulations will allow the designer to know the raw-product increase rate and strains, in order to obtain the correspondent finished-product with the desired geometry.