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As a critical part of auto-body, the design of tailgate not only affects the beauty, usability and safety of automobile, but also involves more and more issues about environmental protection and energy saving. Hence, it is of vital importance to investigate lightweight of tailgate. This paper mainly focuses on lightweight design of CFRP tailgate based on conventional SUV metal tailgate, which can be realized under the condition of meeting requirements of stiffness, modal and manufacturing with the adoption of multi-step optimization method. To start with, finite element (FE) model of metal tailgate is established. Meanwhile, the stiffness and modal analyses, including bending stiffness, torsional stiffness, lateral stiffness, vertical stiffness and free modal are set up. Then, the structural performances of metal tailgate are analyzed, and the topology optimization of CFRP tailgate is performed.

The concept of “bionic design” has driven the developments of automotive 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 utilized to meet the requirement of aerodynamics performance, inner honeycomb cellular structure is filled to achieve more lightweight space. 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 analyzed by experiment. Finally, the stiffness and modal analyses of solid beak-shaped tail fin and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin are carried out respectively. The results indicate that the deformation of solid beak-shaped tail fin and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin satisfy the basic requirements.

The conventional hood with single material and stiffener structural form conceals some limitations on pedestrian protection and lightweight, not satisfying the requirements of structural strength, pedestrian protection and lightweight contradictory with each other at the same time. In this paper, a novel type hood is proposed to develop sandwich structure using architected cellular material with negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) configuration based on the decoupling thought of structural strength and energy absorption. Core-layer aluminum alloy material with NPR is used to meet the requirement of impact energy absorption, inner and outer skin using carbon fiber is selected to achieve high structural stiffness needed. This paper starts from the relations between geometric parameters of core-layer architected cellular material and mechanical properties, on this basis, the optimal geometric parameters can be expected using the multiobjective optimization method.

Gear transmission is widely used in mechanical transmission system and acts an important role in automotive industry. Manufacturing errors, assembly looseness, gear wear issues may result in gear backlash, noise and fatigue damage seriously affecting efficiency and service life of gear transmission. For gear transmission assembled, it is important to monitor the conditions of gear meshing and prevent the occurrence of dangerous situations. How to define the issues of gear tooth wear, misaligned bearing, gear eccentricity, backlash, and how to find faulty planetary gear sets and specific issues existing in gear transmission are meaningful and significant to ensure the quality of product. This paper starts from the analysis on gearing mechanism. Based on the behaviors represented by the issues, gear tooth wear, misaligned bearing, gear eccentricity and backlash are demonstrated and explained in detail.