Performance Analysis on 3D printed beak-shaped automotive tail fin filled with honeycomb cellular structure 2019-01-0712

The concept of “bionic design” has driven the developments of automobile styling design. In this paper, a novel beak-shaped automotive tail fin with honeycomb cellular structure is proposed based on the idea of “bionic design”. Beak-shaped appearance is used to meet the requirement of aerodynamics performance, inner honeycomb cellular structure is filled to achieve lightweight. This paper starts from the establishment of three dimensional (3D) model based on the real characteristics of sparrow’s beak. On this basis, aerodynamic performances of novel beak-shaped tail fin and conventional shark tail fin are conducted through experimental analysis. Finally, the stiffness and modal analyses of solid beak-shaped tail fin and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin are carried out respectively. The results show that the deformation of solid beak-shaped tail fin and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin satisfy the basic requirements. In addition, the first order modal frequencies of solid and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fins are both far away from body vibration frequency and effectively avoid resonance. Compared with solid beak-shaped tail fin, the weight of honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin decreases by about 25%. Thus, the novel honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin proposed in this paper demonstrates outstanding performance in terms of aerodynamic performances, structural stiffness enhancement and weight reduction.