In the automotive industry, there is great significance for the components to meet certain quality requirements. One such component is the so-called ‘back panel’, which is fitted behind the back seat of the car. This component has the requirement that it needs to have a specified minimum stiffness against loads with any load application point. To make this happen, the shape of the back panel model is modified using node-based shape optimization based on the Vertex Morphing method. However, since there are a vast number of nodes, an infinite number of load cases would have to be considered to bring all points of stiffness distribution of the model above a limit value. But this is not possible due to limited computing power. Also, for each of the load case approaches which can be followed, the computation time and the resulting shape of the model may differ. In this work, different heuristic loading approaches consisting of unit loads are implemented on the models in different deformation stages and then the stiffness at every node in the model at each stage is determined. This process is followed until all these stiffness values are above the predefined threshold. Finally, all these approaches are compared with each other, be it in terms of computation time or the feasibility of the shape of the model obtained after optimization or any other deciding factor, to find the best loading approach. In addition to the back panel model, all the loading approaches are also tested on an arch model. This arch model is an auxiliary model which is created virtually to increase the sample set on which the loadings are tested. The results achieved by the proposed tests show a promising loading approach which when followed gives an optimized design that abides by the design requirements under any possible loading scenario.     «

In the automotive industry, there is great significance for the components to meet certain quality requirements. One such component is the so-called ‘back panel’, which is fitted behind the back seat of the car. This component has the requirement that it needs to have a specified minimum stiffness against loads with any load application point. To make this happen, the shape of the back panel model is modified using node-based shape optimization based on the Vertex Morphing method. However,...     »