Body in White concept modeling for early-stage design optimization

The design of an automotive car body needs to account for several attributes, some of which have conflicting requirements. On the other hand, Body in White (BiW) Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) models have nowadays reached a high level of details and complexity, resulting in heavy simulation models and long computation times. This thesis, developed in collaboration with Siemens Digital Industries Software, is focused in developing a methodology for the concept design of BiW models, that aims at significantly speeding up the early-stage design process of a vehicle, when a lot of uncertainty and errors are involved. A possible solution, consisting in having a simpler BiW model composed by basic structural elements (beams, joints, panels), is presented here; this model will still be able to represent the vehicle and its static and dynamic behavior with a good approximation, providing a method applicable in the early stage of the conceptual design. Engineers look for a trade-off between having to design detailed Finite Element (FE) models (together with precise CAD models, that take up too much time) and a simpler model that can be easily adapted to the need and preferences of the customer. It is proposed here a way to perform, with a simplified model that can be assembled in a very short time, a good optimization of the BiW model based on reaching customer-defined property goals. This thesis aims at providing the tools that allow to generate a library, containing a reliable representation of the properties of a model, that can be used to optimize the model in a relatively short time.