Generative design
Part by part to a lightweight automobile
With the increasing demand for electric vehicles, car manufacturers are faced with the challenge of producing their vehicles lighter and lighter - because less weight increases the range of the vehicles. Generative design in combination with additive manufacturing promises enormous potential for weight savings. Pioneers in the automotive industry such as General Motors and VW are already testing this innovative approach.
The global automotive industry is changing: stricter regulations and the Paris Climate Agreement, rapid technological advances and consumer demand for greater efficiency and lowerCO2 emissions require new ways of thinking and the use of innovations and new technologies. For this reason, car manufacturers are looking for ways to improve engine performance and reduce vehicle weight. To this end, the more than 30,000 parts that make up a car, such as the steering wheel, pedals, seats, engine, brakes and even wheel rims, are being re-examined for optimization potential.
Automation, artificial intelligence and robotics in particular can help to plan, design and manufacture much more efficiently. This not only enables companies to work more economically, but also reduces the negative impact on people and the environment. Increased collaboration between humans and machines offers great potential. Their different skills complement each other in order to master current and future challenges. If users and robots work together and learn from each other, existing processes and solutions can also benefit and be optimized.
Thousands of design drafts in a very short time
One example of the joint creation of man and machine in industry is the use of generative design. Here, artificial intelligence creates design variations based on the parameters specified by the designer, such as material, weight, load-bearing capacity or production methods. Working in the cloud enables the development of hundreds to thousands of possible design options in the shortest possible time. By eliminating unsuitable designs and accepting others, the user achieves the optimum design result.
This form of design in combination with additive manufacturing is revolutionizing traditional design and manufacturing methods. More and more industries and companies are recognizing the added value of automation, particularly with regard to artificial intelligence and robotics, and are increasingly investing in its use. This includes the established car manufacturer General Motors, which is considered one of the pioneers in the field of automation.
General Motors sees enormous potential in automation and collaboration with machines. For the vehicles of the future, the car manufacturer is combining its many years of expertise in additive manufacturing with the new form of generative design. To this end, General Motors is cooperating with Autodesk and using the Fusion 360 design software to redesign vehicle parts. The technology is used in particular in the development of new models and the transition to electrically powered vehicles and enables the company to save material and minimize the weight of vehicle parts.
Eight becomes one
One of the components that General Motors has reworked using generative design is the seat console. This box-shaped element, which usually consists of eight parts, is the counterpart for seat belts. With the help of generative design, General Motors was able to construct a functionally optimized seat console that is 40 percent lighter and 20 percent more stable.
For this result, the designers defined parameters such as strength, required connection points and weight. These values were fed into the Autodesk software to generate over 150 different designs.
From these designs, some of which were very abstract, the decision-makers at General Motors selected what they considered to be the best design, which was particularly convincing in terms of the test values for weight and stability. In addition, the final design for the redesign of the seat console demonstrates another advantage: the structure, which was previously made from eight components, now consists of just one single part. This means that the entire seat console can be 3D printed.
By using generative design, the vehicle manufacturer has succeeded for the first time in designing a component that is significantly lighter due to its organic structure and still meets all the important parameters. The implementation of such a complex design is not possible for humans alone.
Less rolling resistance thanks to generative design
VW has also made use of the advantages of generative design and recently presented a revised vintage bus equipped with an electric motor. Several components of the popular VW Bulli Type 2 were optimized using Autodesk's generative design approach.
For the project, the rims of the 1962 11-window Type 2 microbus with Fusion 360 were generatively designed and the structure completely rethought. The new wheels are 18 percent lighter than the original ones and thus not only reduce the overall weight of the vehicle, but also reduce the rolling resistance of the tires.
In addition, the steering wheel, the support structure for the rear seat bench and the exterior mirror mounts have also been redesigned. These new structures, which require significantly less material than a conventional wheel structure, could otherwise only have been realized by human designers and engineers with a great deal of effort. The new wheel rims, the redesigned seat console and other projects are examples of everything that humans can achieve and produce with the help of generative design, but above all in collaboration with machines. Generative design and 3D printing can therefore be the decisive solution for many manufacturers and industrial sectors when it comes to optimizing processes and objects or making them more efficient.
Automated calculation model for a better cost overview
Optimizing the processes also involves weighing up the performance and costs of manufacturing the parts. Autodesk is therefore cooperating with the cost management tool aPriori. The automated costing model, which is available as an add-on in Fusion 360, takes into account geometry, material and manufacturing process - criteria that users enter when creating a generative design study. The tool analyzes each design variant created with a generative design study to determine the cost framework for production. This enables users to make well-founded cost/benefit decisions early on in the design process.
With this form of automation and the use of new technologies, companies can position themselves competitively and at the same time reduce the consumption of materials and thus the negative impact on the environment.
If each individual part can be made even slightly lighter, the overall result is a much lighter vehicle. So, with standard application, cars can become lighter overall. And the less a vehicle weighs, the less energy is needed to move it on the road. This offers an enormous advantage for electric cars in particular - because here the weight has a particular impact on the range of the batteries.
Karl Osti, Industry Manager Manufacturing at Autodesk / ag
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