EVS26 Los Angeles, California, May 6 - 9, 2012 Lightweight Body in White Design Using Topology-, Shape- and Size Optimisation Christophe Bastien 1 , Jesper Christensen 2 , Mike V Blundell 3 , Jakovs Kurakins 4 1 Coventry University, christophe.bastien@coventry.ac.uk, Priory Street, Coventry, CV1 5FB, UK 2 jesper.christensen@coventry.ac.uk 3 mike.blundell@coventry.ac.uk 3 j.kurakins@hotmail.de Abstract As focus on the world climate rises, so does the demand for ever more environmentally friendly technolo- gies. The response from the automotive industry includes vehicles whose primary propulsion systems are not based upon fossil fuels. On this basis a Low Carbon Vehicle Technology Project (LCVTP), partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), has been completed. The project included designing a lightweight Body In White (BIW), specifically tailored to suit the drive train and general packaging requirements associated with a Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV). The future opportunities for optimising the new lightweight vehicle architecture have been investigated using a technique entitled topology optimisation, which extracts the idealised load paths for a given set of load cases, followed by a shape- and size optimisation in order to provide local areas of the vehicle with more definition. An appropriate shape- and size optimisation process for frontal crashworthiness scenarios has been devel- oped by comparing and combining different point selection methods and applying various metamodelling techniques. Keywords: Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV), Electric Vehicle (EV), optimization 1 Introduction The automotive industry is a very competitive in- dustry. In order to gain competitive advantages it is imperative that innovative vehicles are de- veloped rapidly as well as economically. Fur- thermore, due to global awareness, concern, as well as political- and legislative focus on en- vironmental protection and conservation signifi- cantly increases the design and engineering chal- lenges within the automotive industry. In gen- eral, vehicle manufacturers focus upon the devel- opment of lightweight vehicle structures, which must comply with stringent safety regulations. With reduction of mass as the main objective, it is imperative that the required functionality of the vehicle structure is retained or perhaps even improved. Besides NVH and fatigue life, crash performance is one of the most important attributes to be considered, partially due to the legislative requirements. In order to meet these difficult challenges for lightweight vehicle de- sign and development; the use of emerging com- putational optimisation techniques is increasing. The first step of the “ideal”optimisation process, with respect to mass reduction, is therefore the use of topology optimisation, providing defini- tions of load paths within the specified vehicle design envelope, the design volume. This optimi- sation phase removes “surplus” material, which does not efficiently contribute to the structures ability to react the applied loading. The post- processing of the topology optimisation results is a very important stage of the overall process. This is because the topology optimisation model is not likely to have incorporated all potential variations of crash-scenarios. Hence sensitivity studies of the topology are required in order to EVS26 International Battery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Symposium 1 World Electric Vehicle Journal Vol. 5 - ISSN 2032-6653 - © 2012 WEVA Page 0137