Jürgen Sellschopp

Topology Optimization with Integrated Casting Simulation and Parallel Manufacturing Process Improvement

Affordable lightweight design is one of the key topics for the automotive future. Increasing worldwide competition, stricter legal guidelines and weight-intensive electronic components of new drive systems require lighter and more economic chassis components. Aluminum parts enable activation of lightweight design potentials in terms of good material properties and affordable costs. To ensure cost-effective production of cast parts, a lean and efficient manufacturing process is necessary. Furthermore, a lighter design lowers the material costs of the part directly. Topology optimization offers a lightweight design in a fast automatic procedure and is nowadays used at the beginning of many development processes for cast parts. Commercial optimization software considers the castability of the part only insufficiently on the basis of simple geometric rules. Thus, manual modifications for the manufacturing process are needed.

Optimization of Manufacturing Tolerances on Sheet Metal Components in the Development Process

In an increasingly challenging environment of growing competition and stricter legal regulations, the concept of lightweight design gets more and more important for the automotive industry. Usually, the goals of lightweight tend to conflict with the robustness of the designs. The scattering of the geometry within the manufacturing tolerance leads to a divergence between the test bench results and the prediction from simulation. For an optimized lightweight design, this deviation will often lead to a violation of the requirements. In this case, the part has to be re-designed to improve its robustness, causing an additional time expense, higher costs and a higher weight.