Abstract
One of the great challenges facing designers and engineers in the automotive industry today is to develop products that meet demanding structural performance requirements while satisfying constraints on mass, design cycle time and manufacturing process.
A commercial code, ReSHAPE, has been very successful in tackling such problems. Specifically developed for use in the automotive industry, the software has built-in shape optimisation capabilities which improve an existing design using an iterative process and finally determine the best shape for the component. The program is centred on the finite element method and utilises sensitivity data to search for the optimum shape of a structure. The use of these numerical techniques accelerates the development process and reduces design cycle costs.
Several examples are provided which demonstrate how shape optimisation technique led to superior products and solved complex design problems for various automotive manufacturers.