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In this paper, for the front wall of a certain automobile, the defects of drawing splits, excessive thinning and excessive springback in the sheet metal forming process are analyzed and predicted. The stamping process has been simulated. The influence of different technical parameters (blank holder force, stamping speed, die gap and friction coefficient) on the forming results was further investigated using the center composite experiment. Through preliminary finite element simulation, the main drawing defects and trimming springback were analyzed. The second-order response surface model was established to perform the multi-objective optimization design of the stamping process with a NGSA-II genetic algorithm. Based on the relevant simulation data, multiple springback compensations are performed on the die surface to reduce the final springback of the part to meet the requirements.

Thin-walled tubes have been mostly used in passive vehicle safety systems due to high crash energy absorption. The structures with negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR) property will contract to increase its stiffness. In this paper, a double-arrowed NPR structure is designed as a new energy-absorption filler for thin-walled tubes to apply as a novel crash energy absorber. Different beam thicknesses, angles and half cellular width are taken into account in the double-arrowed NPR filling tubes (DAFT) designing and the crashworthiness of the structures are analyzed by using validated nonlinear finite element method. The crashworthiness performances of DAFT are also compared with the singular NPR and hollow tube with the same outer dimension to show the efficiency of DAFT.

The safety and comfort of the truck cab, as driver’s location, are significant to the driver, and the white body of the truck cab is an important part of the truck, whose modal and stiffness are directly impact its safety and comfort. Moreover, its modal and stiffness are the key factors that affect the performance of the car, which are also the important indicators that evaluate the ability of preventing fatigue failure and resisting deformation. In order to study whether the modal and stiffness of a truck cab can meet the working requirements, the white body of a truck cab was taken as the research object, and the finite element method (FEM) was chosen to study the modal and stiffness in this paper. The finite element model of the white body of this truck cab was established. The natural frequency and vibration model of white body were obtained by modal analysis. And the lowest frequency of the white body was 22.8Hz, obtained by modal analysis.

In this advanced technological era, lightweight design for fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness is essential for both conventional and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), without sacrificing the durability which is an important design factor for vehicle safety. To achieve these objectives, reduction of the structural mass of the full vehicle plays a vital role. The scope of this paper is to describe design methodologies for the vehicle differential case applied to achieve light weight and to ensure product life. The focus of this paper includes two tasks. The topology optimization and fatigue analysis of a vehicle differential case are conducted. Finite element analysis (FEA) is used to simulate the stress with constraint. After that, optimization parameters (design variables, responses, objective functions and constraints) of a vehicle differential case are selected for lightweight design by solid isotropic microstructures with penalization (SIMP) method.

As is known to all, the modeling of vehicles and durability simulation is becoming more accurate and more compatible with physical testing, resulting in shortening of the analysis process, and a lower cost. It would be more advantageous in the future to simulate the full vehicle system before the physical testing. Thus, in the analysis of vehicle durability performance, the need for more precise rigid and flexible vehicle modeling and more precise external loadings acquisition method is increasing. In view of the typical difficulties faced in the vehicle multi-body dynamics (MBD) simulation and in the associated loading extraction, this paper proposes a method to achieve accurate external vehicle loadings by virtual simulation. This method is performed based on the physical testing and compensates for the imperfections in the MBD modeling, thus being able to improve the quality of fatigue life prediction (FLP).