The purpose of this paper is to present a new methodology to design the topology of structures for energy absorption such as vehicle structures under crash events. Traditionally, this has been a difficult task due to the complexity of the physics involved, but in the last decade the simulation of nonlinear impact events have improved tremendously. Several commercial software products are capable of simulating a vehicle crash with relatively high fidelity. The computer time is, however, very high. The task is then to obtain a better structural topology design with the minimal number of simulations. A new approach to obtain structural topology designs for crashworthiness conditions has been presented. The method is heuristic, therefore, it is not guaranteed to converge or to have a unique solution. But numerical experiments have shown its uses in real problems, and the methodology has been tested in several problems; results were presented for only one of them. Using an interpolation between porous and solid (non-porous) materials plus a re-design rule to by-pass gradient computations the new approach is able to determine better locations of material and density in a given structural domain for kinetic energy dissipation. Structures made of shells and beams were part of the testing problems as well. Based on the results, this method provide good information to perform topology design in nonlinear impact problems where the absorption of energy is the main concern. More research is needed to enhance this heuristic approach and make it more robust. An example is presented to illustrate the methodology.


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    Title :

    Optimal structural topology design for energy absorption: a heuristic approach


    Additional title:

    Optimaler, struktureller Topologieentwurf für die Energieabsorption: ein heuristisches Verfahren


    Contributors:
    Soto, C.A. (author)


    Publication date :

    2001


    Size :

    6 Seiten, 6 Bilder, 10 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English





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