Multiphase Design Exploration Method for Lightweight Structural Design: Example of Vehicle Mounted Antenna-Supporting Structure

In this study, we design a lightweight antenna-supporting structure for a vehicle-mounted radar system using a multiphase design exploration method. In the first phase of the approach, structural topology within a given design domain is optimized in order to reduce the weight and increase the structural integrity applying various design scenarios, which provides several preliminary structural layouts. Inspecting the commonalities and differences of the preliminary layouts, key shape (i.e., geometry) parameters in an initial layout to be further explored are chosen. In the second phase, design variables, the chosen shape parameters and properties of its material are concurrently explored to satisfy; the given system requirements. For the concurrent design exploration of the materials and structures, the inductive design exploration method is employed for obtaining feasible ranged sets of design variables, instead of a single optimum solution. In this way, a designer may simply make a robust choice among the feasible sets under various sources of uncertainties and multiple performance requirements.