This presentation was made at the NAFEMS European Conference on Simulation-Based Optimisation held on the 15th of October in London.

Optimisation has become a key ingredient in many engineering disciplines and has experienced rapid growth in recent years due to innovations in optimisation algorithms and techniques, coupled with developments in computer hardware and software capabilities. The growing popularity of optimisation in engineering applications is driven by ever-increasing competition pressure, where optimised products and processes can offer improved performance and cost-effectiveness which would not be possible using traditional design approaches. However, there are still many hurdles to be overcome before optimisation is used routinely for engineering applications.

The NAFEMS European Conference on Simulation-Based Optimisation brings together practitioners and academics from all relevant disciplines to share their knowledge and experience, and discuss problems and challenges, in order to facilitate further improvements in optimisation techniques.

Resource Abstract

When designing a front suspension system today, there are a large number of suspension characteristics that need to be balanced and accounted for to make up for the suspension design. This has traditionally led to a difficult task where the engineers are trying to find the best possible solution that will optimize all of these characteristics as good as possible. With the use of a new advanced steering system called Blueprint Steering, the steering feel is created by using the power steering together with an advanced controller. Because of this, some suspension characteristics that makes up the steering feel can be eliminated. This will change the complete setup of the optimization project and focus can be spent on areas of the suspension design that has usually been left out.



Traditionally, Design Exploration is a powerful technology to optimize and visualize the conflicting characteristics when designing the complete suspension system. With a large number of objectives, it is challenging to find a suitable solution that fulfills all requirements on a complex design space. This work will highlight a novel approach in the use of Simcenter HEEDS for suspension design and especially how it can be used to fully explore all possible solutions so the vehicle engineers can find the best possible balance between contracting characteristics in order to refine the vehicle behavior.



A comparison has been done where Design Exploration was used on a traditional suspension development project and one that was using the Blueprint Steering. It will show the importance of using optimization when searching the design space for not just optimal designs that fulfills all objectives, but also feasible designs that meets all necessary constraints. A number of different plotting techniques will be used to visualize how the point cloud of feasible designs changes as you specify the optimization projects differently.