Abstract
Time to Market and cost reduction objectives are strongly pushing car manufacturers towards a preliminary virtual design release for almost all the functional performances of vehicles, leaving to tests on prototypes just the final design release. Within this context, a numerical methodology has been developed to check the structural behaviour of a car body-in-white ( biw) during random fatigue tests, focusing on the localisation of critical areas. The main advantages offered by the methodology are related to both the opportunity of checking early-conceived changes in design and the cost and time savings attainable during experimental tests by the a-priori knowledge of the critical areas.