Multidisciplinary design optimization on vehicle tailor rolled blank design

Tailor rolled blank (TRB) is an emerging steel rolling process to produce lightweight vehicle components. It allows continuous metal thickness changes, and as a result, it offers opportunities for automotive design in weight reduction, part complexity reduction, reduced capital investment, yet, maintains equal to or better strength characteristics. The objective of this research is to take advantages of the TRB manufacturing technology and combine with the advanced multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) methodology to optimize vehicle structure. The process begins with noise vibration and harshness (NVH) optimization. The outputs of the optimal NVH response sensitivities are employed to build the first order response surface models. Uniform Latin Hypercube sampling and subset selection regression methods are used to construct the response surface models for the highly nonlinear impact and seatbelt pull responses. The optimal NVH design is then used as the starting point for MDO to obtain the optimal thickness profiles for the TRB parts. A vehicle application considering multiple impact modes, seatbelt pulls, and NVH, is used to demonstrate the proposed process for vehicle underbody TRB design. Results of this MDO TRB study is presented and discussed.