Abstract
Keywords - Aluminium, Lightweight Design, Integration, Audi Space Frame - ASF®, Die- Cast
Our world and especially the automotive surroundings are subject to permanent changes. Global trends like CO2 and ecology, dependency on imports, shortage of resources, urbanisation, and changes in infrastructures, progressive policy of innovations, etc. must be beard precaution in developing intelligent solutions.
Integration of functions in body design including the idea of integrating attributes defining a vehicle´s market position, lead to an increase of material efficiency in the majority of cases. Audi AG developed an often awarded car body concept, the Audi Space Frame ASF® that is notably dedicated to implement material efficiency by integrating functions within a lightweight design.
The inspiration of the ASF can be characterised as "A visionary idea that revolutionised the automotive industry and is substantial part of the Audi Body Design." Audi has already 8 passenger cars brought to market with the ASF body design and therefore can look back on 13 years of experience in ASF production.
The potential of material efficiency can be found in several levels of development. The degree of integration with the ASF specific semi-finished elements, Aluminium vacuum pressure castings and extruded sections, is very high. In using modern computer-aided methods, such as topology optimisation, the bionic principle of lightweight design, to use material only where the functional requirement makes it necessary, is remarkably high.
Another main issue of material efficiency by functional integration can be found within the principle of design for economical derivatives: The number of variety in machine- and jigtechnology can be reduced by using different inner shapes for varying requirements while the outer shape and therefore the jig- and joining technology will remain unaffected.
The most important matter for the increase of material efficiency was realised by integrating market positioning attributes into the body structure: subjectively noticeable characteristics were already defined by the Audi TT´s body shell concept.