Lightweight Body in White design using topology-, shape- and size optimisation

As focus on the world climate rises, so does the demand for ever more environmentally friendly technologies. 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 developed by comparing and combining different point selection methods and applying various metamodelling techniques.