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

In the optimization-driven design process of automotive vehicles, meeting the design targets and fulfilling the multi-disciplinary requirements for a certain component under multiple crash load cases is a challenging task.



The use of full vehicle digital crash models of high detail level and the number of iterative solutions during their optimization, result in high computational times and the need of great amount of computing resources. The method to overcome these bottlenecks is sub-structuring.



In this presentation we will demonstrate a process of combining topology and parametric shape optimization for the performance improvement of a vehicle’s sill, considering two load cases: side pole and small overlap frontal crash, using sub-structuring.



Both optimization loops take place using, different for each load case, sub-models of the whole vehicle. The creation of these sub-models is conducted almost automatically within a dedicated process software tool, which ensures their integrity and validity, using ANSA’s powerful corresponding functionalities. Multiple variants of the Part (component) Under Investigation (PUI) can be parametrized regarding their shape and cross-sections simultaneously and be optimized taking into consideration different manufacturing processes as well. Τhe application of the loads for each load-case is defined once and by using a Load Case Manager are applied automatically throughout the process multiple times.



As an additional step in the process, topology optimization can also be invoked, within the environment of this process software tool, using the same sub-models created in the previous step to explore and identify possible alternative solutions. The “interpretation” of topology optimization results into part/s 3D geometry is also facilitated by ANSA’s dedicated functionality, leading into new concept structures. The new concept 3D geometry variants of the component have to be validated regarding their performance and if needed parametrized and further optimized if possible.