Development of a safe modular body structure for a battery electric driven urban vehicle

Three new vehicle concepts are being developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as part of the Next Generation Car META-project: Urban Modular Vehicle (UMV), Safe Light Regional Vehicle and Interurban Vehicle. A high grade of modularity is the main design specification of the UMV concept. This significantly influences the design of the main structural components. In the presented contribution, the focus lies on the development of an intelligent design and optimisation process for this highly modular vehicle concept. Therefore, a crash optimisation strategy was developed which allows the identification of the right material and the required geometry for the main crash related components