This paper presents a new design optimization method that is applicable to design the vehicle body structure with multi-material. Two different level set functions are employed to express the properties of steel and aluminum in automotive body, and th...
This paper presents a new design optimization method that is applicable to design the vehicle body structure with multi-material. Two different level set functions are employed to express the properties of steel and aluminum in automotive body, and the concept of phase field model is applied to construct the objective function for considering the welding area which causes an increase of the production cost. The optimization problem is formulated to minimize both the mean compliance of body structure under an exciting load and the contact area between two materials. To confirm the usefulness of the proposed method, a structural design example for an automotive underbody is provided.