Generative Engineering Approach for a B-pillar Car Body Node
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Exemplary illustration of an AM node integration
Generative Engineering Approach for a B-pillar Car Body Node
AUTHORS
David Leidenfrost, M. Eng. is Co-founder and Head of Application Engineering at ELISE GmbH in Bremen (Germany).
Additive manufacturing and the new development world of generative engineering lead to stiffer and lighter car body structures. Thanks to this generative and bionic design approach, realized with the ELISE software platform, Hyundai was able to reduce the weight of a B-pillar node by 47 %, increase the crash performance by 20 % and shorten the development time by 80 %.
REDUCING THE WEIGHT OF VEHICLES
Dipl.-Ing. Bahman Moarefi is Senior Engineer of the Engineering Design Department at the Hyundai Motor Europe Technical Center (HMETC) in Rüsselsheim (Germany).
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© Hyundai
The automotive industry faces new challenges every day. New styling trends, scientific discoveries and stricter emission regulations force companies to constantly create new design and production methods. They must constantly reduce the weight of
their vehicles while improving their performance efficiency. Two major enabler technologies of the automotive future are Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology as well as the new development world of generative engineering. One provides design freedom and a tool-less manufacturing process; the other one offers a yet unknown automation of product development pro-
FIGURE 1 Design space of the B-pillar node and critical load cases for side crash, bending and torsion (blurred representations) (© Hyundai)
cesses. In automotive development, the combination of these two future techno logies enables the construction of highly efficient vehicle structures in a significantly shorter development time. GENERATIVE ENGINEERING – AVOIDING WAITING PERIODS
Anyone who develops technical components knows regular waiting periods. Idle
times occur, for example, when coordination with other departments becomes necessary. Such R&D loops are an essential part of the development process in every company, but also dead time. The reason is in the complex and often cumbersome processes of companies: An engineer creates the part design specification, which is passed on to a colleague. It is calculated whether the design meets the strength criteria, and the plan is returned for revision. After a few loops of this kind, the project manager may get involved and demand a cheaper material or a switch to another production method. And then the entire development process starts all over again. What if only one expert collected the project-relevant data from the specific departments, digitized it and left individual development steps and iterations to an intelligent software? Then development processes would not only run much faster; the computer assistance would also produce completely new and possibly better designs. This approach is already reality, this future is already here. The new method is called Generative Engineering and together with the intelligent software platform ELISE they offer an inno
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