Abstract
With the growing demand for enhanced automotive fuel efficiency and environmental sustainability, there is a need for lightweighting automotive components through innovative design and manufacturing processes. This study leverages a combination of numerical iterative design optimization and hybrid additive manufacturing–compression molding (AM-CM) technique for metal polymer composites to lightweight an automotive seatback. The AM-CM process enables robust mechanical interlocking between metals and composites, boasting high stiffness and strength with low overall density. Replacing metallic components with such metal polymer composites allows for comparable mechanical performance while significantly reducing the overall weight. First, the automotive seatback design space is reduced to critical load carrying regions using topology optimization and high stress concentration areas are identified using finite element analysis. Next, a lightweight metal polymer subcomponent is designed for a high stress concentration region. The full seatback frame with spatially heterogeneous material-specific design is then iteratively optimized to enable enhanced stiffness with minimal weight. Overall, the automotive seatback frame designed with location-specific metal, polymer, and metal polymer composite materials weighs 20% less than the metal-only design while exhibiting similar stiffness.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 118504 |
| Journal | Composite Structures |
| Volume | 349-350 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2024 |
Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Lightweight Materials Consortium (LightMAT) , sponsored by the Vehicle Technologies Office, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy . Portions of the research were also supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy , Advanced Manufacturing Office , under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. The authors are grateful for the technical contributions from the Research and Innovation Center at Ford Motor Company. The large-scale AM machine used in this research was sponsored by Cincinnati Inc., OH, USA . The feedstock materials used in this work were provided by Techmer PM., TN, USA. Binder Jet additively manufactured metal specimens were obtained from ExOne. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Lightweight Materials Consortium (LightMAT), sponsored by the Vehicle Technologies Office, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. Portions of the research were also supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. The authors are grateful for the technical contributions from the Research and Innovation Center at Ford Motor Company. The large-scale AM machine used in this research was sponsored by Cincinnati Inc. OH, USA. The feedstock materials used in this work were provided by Techmer PM. TN, USA. Binder Jet additively manufactured metal specimens were obtained from ExOne.
Keywords
- Binder jet additive manufacturing
- Compression molding
- Finite element analysis
- Large-scale additive manufacturing
- Metal polymer composites
- Structural optimization