Shape Optimization of Thin-Walled Cross Section for Automobile Body Considering Stamping Cost, Manufacturability and Structural Stiffness

At the conceptual design stage, the cross-sectional shapes of thin-walled beams (TWBs) need to be optimized to improve the performance of automobile structure. Therefore, this paper innovatively proposes a cross-sectional shape optimization method to acquire a low cost, high stiffness, manufacturable and lightweight TWB. Meanwhile, the stamping cost of thin-walled beams is analytically derived. The cross-sectional area is taken as the objective function to establish an optimization formulation with multiple constraints such as cross-sectional stiffness, manufacturability and cost of TWBs. The single-objective genetic algorithm based on non-dominant principle is introduced to solve the problem. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by an example of double cell cross-sectional shape.