Search Results

Self-piercing rivets (SPR) are efficient and economical joining methods used in the manufacturing of lightweight automotive bodies. The finite element method (FEM) is a potentially effective way to assess the joining process of SPRs. However, uncertain parameters could lead to significant mismatches between the FEM predictions and physical tests. Thus, a sensitivity study on critical model parameters is important to guide the high-fidelity modeling of the SPR insertion process. In this paper, an axisymmetric FEM model is constructed to simulate the insertion process of the SPR using LS-DYNA/explicit. Then, several surrogate models are evaluated and trained using machine learning methods to represent the relations between selected inputs (e.g., material properties, interfacial frictions, and clamping force) and outputs (cross-section dimensions).

Vehicle weight reduction has become one of the most crucial problems in the automotive industry because that increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, such as fuel economy and environmental protection, must be met. The lightweight design needs to consider various vehicle attributes, including crashworthiness and stiffness. Therefore, in essence, the vehicle weight reduction is a typical Multidisciplinary Design Optimization problem. To improve the computational efficiency, meta-models have been widely used as the surrogate of FE model in the multidisciplinary optimization of large structures. However, these surrogate models introduce additional sources of uncertainties, such as model uncertainty, which may lead to the poor accuracy in prediction. In this paper, a method of corrected surrogate model based multidisciplinary design optimization under uncertainty is proposed to incorporate the uncertainties introduced by both meta-models and design variables.