Configurational optimization of multi-cell topologies for multiple oblique loads

Multi-cell thin-walled structures exhibit significant advantages in maximizing energy absorption and minimizing mass during vehicle crashes. Since the topological distribution of wall members has an appreciable effect on the crashworthiness, their design signifies an important area of research. As a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Structural and multidisciplinary optimization Vol. 57; no. 2; pp. 469 - 488
Main Authors: Sun, Guangyong, Liu, Tangying, Fang, Jianguang, Steven, Grant P., Li, Qing
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.02.2018
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Computational Mathematics and Numerical Analysis
Configurations
Crashes
Crashworthiness
Energy absorption
Engineering
Engineering Design
Genetic algorithms
Impact strength
Maximization
Research Paper
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Thin wall structures
Topology optimization
Tubes
Wall thickness
Webs (structural)
Topology optimization
ICGA-based design
Multiple loading cases
Crashworthiness
Multi-celled tubes
ISSN:1615-147X, 1615-1488
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Multi-cell thin-walled structures exhibit significant advantages in maximizing energy absorption and minimizing mass during vehicle crashes. Since the topological distribution of wall members has an appreciable effect on the crashworthiness, their design signifies an important area of research. As a major energy absorber, multi-cell tubes are more commonly encounter oblique loading in real life. Thus, this study aimed to optimize multi-cell cross-sectional configuration of tubal structures for multiple oblique loading cases. An integer coded genetic algorithm (ICGA) is introduced here to optimize topological distribution of multi-celled web members for single/multiple oblique impacting conditions. Specifically, material distribution in a form of allocating web wall thickness, starting from zero, is considered as design variables and maximization of energy absorption ( EA ) as the design objective under the predefined peak crushing force and structural mass constraints. The optimization allows generating uniform or non-uniform thickness distribution in different web wall configurations to maximize usage efficiency of material. Compared with the baseline structure, the optimized configurations largely improved the energy absorption in both single and multiple load cases. The examples demonstrate that the proposed ICGA-based design method not only provides a useful approach to searching for novel crashworthy structures in a systematic fashion, but also develops a series of novel multi-cell topologies for multiple oblique loading cases.
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ISSN:1615-147X
1615-1488
DOI:10.1007/s00158-017-1839-5