Design of an Aluminum Bumper Beam Based on Hybrid Cellular Automata

Abstract:

In order to improve the crashworthiness and simultaneously achieve the lightweight goal, a design method was proposed for an aluminum bumper. A crashworthiness simulation model was established first and topology optimization was conducted based on hybrid cellular automata (HCA). The material distribution from topology optimization was used to generate H shaped cross section. Base on the Kriging modeling technique, size optimization was executed to acquire the optimal sectional dimension. The final result demonstrates that the proposed method is able to provide a reasonable cross sectional shape and size of the bumper, and to improve the crashworthiness of the bumper beam and to achieve a lightweight design.

Key words:vehicle bumper; hybrid cellular automata (HCA); topology optimization; crashworthiness; Kriging model; lightweight