Sustainable design of a side door reinforcing assembly - exploratory optimisation

An optimization study of a door reinforcing assembly is presented. The objective of the study, apart from an alternative material search, is to find an optimal assembly configuration and an optimal topology, whereby the topology optimisation allows for topologies to be produced by unconventional manufacturing processes. A factor analysis was conducted to investigate the effects of multiple input parameters. The thicknesses of the components were observed to be the most influential input parameters. The chosen optimum improved the crush resistance by more than 80%, while reducing the mass by 1.2%. However, the material volume increased by 80% and material utilisation decreased 7%.