Technical Paper
Lightweight Design Enabled by Innovative CAE Based Development Method Using Topology Optimization
2024-04-09
2024-01-2454
Carbon neutrality is a great and important target these days. One essential parameter regarding energy consumption and emissions is the mass of vehicles. Light weight design improves the result of the life cycle assessment (LCA) of vehicles, increases the efficiency and can be a step towards sustainability and C02 neutrality. Weight reduction respectively structure optimization is a challenging task anyway. Typical design development procedures have to be overcome. Instead of just a facelift or the creation of a derivate of the predecessor design, completely alternative design creation methods have to be applied. Automated structure optimization is one appropriate tool to explore completely new design approaches. Different methods are available and weight reduction is the focus of topology optimization.