Development of Smart Design Process for Light Weight Body in White

This paper describes a new approach and specific design procedure for more lightweight automotive Body in White (BIW) design. For a BIW structure with a target value for static stiffness, joints with high stiffness sensitivity are selected and a lightweight BIW joint design chart is produced from calculations combining topology optimization and thickness optimization. Using this chart made it possible to theoretically assign an optimum spring value to the BIW structure for the purpose of lightweight design, enabling substantial weight reduction in the base model while maintaining the same stiffness performance. Moreover, we found that by applying other load cases together with static stiffness, such as dynamic stiffness and local stiffness, and following a design procedure that utilizes their interactions, significant weight reduction can be achieved in comparison with the conventional design process that adds each product characteristic individually to a BIW structure satisfying static stiffness.Cross Reference: