Single- and Multi-material-Based Design of Lightweight Vehicle Body

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of design parameter adjustments on the vehicle’s strength and body weight. To generate a lightweight design for a vehicle body, the bus body is examined and optimised. The direct optimisation process is used to obtain optimised vehicle bodies by changing material, component’s wall thickness and material diversity. The entire body of the vehicle is considered, but local optimisation is prioritised in this work because some parts are affected more than others under different loading conditions. Three different loading conditions are decided by considering normal loads on the vehicle bodies under normal driving conditions. The vehicle’s body structure weight is minimised while stresses and deformations are created in the boundaries. Three different materials are initially analysed and optimised. The multi-material vehicle body is designed after combining two materials with the best optimisation performance using optimisation rates. After obtaining the multi-material-based vehicle structure, its initial analysis and optimisation procedures are calculated as single-material-based vehicle structures. Finally, four different optimised vehicle body structures are obtained: three single-material based and one multi-material based. The effects of different loading conditions, and design parameters, such as component wall thickness, material type, and material diversity, are investigated, along with their advantages and disadvantages.