Research
Development of Front End Crash Structure for Lightweight Hybrid Electric Vehicle
Rooted in the £29 million Low Carbon Vehicle Technology Project (LCVTP), Coventry University has continued to conduct research into lightweight Body In White (BIW) design and lightweight crash structure development utilising structural optimisation for alternatively fuelled vehicles such as Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV). This paper explains how a lightweight HEV front end crash structure has been developed, refined and validated using numerical analysis. This is based on structural optimisation results, benchmarking of similar sized vehicles and previous experience of crash structure development.
Generation of Optimised Hybrid Electric Vehicle Body In White Architecture from a Styling Envelope
As focus on the world climate rises, so does the demand for ever more environmentally friendly technologies. The response from the automotive industry includes vehicles whose primary propulsion systems are not based upon fossil fuels, namely Full Electrical Vehicles (FEV). There is an opportunity to design and engineer new innovative FEV architectures, whilst minimising their mass in order to further reduce carbon emissions. This paper proposes an engineering process for optimising new FEV lightweight vehicle architecture based on a technique entitled topology optimisation, which extracts the idealised load paths for a given set of load cases. Subsequently shape and size optimisations are conducted in order to obtain detailed information of localised vehicle geometry such as individual BIW cross-sections. The research discusses each individual step of the overall process including successes, limitations and further engineering challenges and complications which will need to be resolved in order to automate the vehicle architecture design to include e.g. durability and (dynamic) crashworthiness performance.
