Investigating the use of reduction techniques in concept modeling for vehicle body design optimization

The use of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools in the automotive industry is nowadays a confirmed approach to predict the various functional performance attributes (ride and handling, NVH, crashworthiness, etc.) and adapt the design based on the outcome of virtual simulations. In particular, reduction of the time to market has been one of the main thrusts in the automotive sector in the last years, pushing researchers to find more efficient methods to solve design problems. This paper proposes a systematic procedure to efficiently evaluate the influence of design changes on the vehicle performance. The approach is based on a detailed Multibody (MB) model of chassis and suspensions of a passenger car including its Body In White (BIW) as a flexible element. Several reduction techniques (Guyan, MacNeal, Beam and Joint concept modelling) have been adopted in order to accurately represent the BIW flexibility, thus allowing a fast investigation of its influence on different driving scenarios.

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