Body Structure Static-Dynamic Analysis and Optimization of a Commercial Vehicle
White body in the design process needs to meet the needs of a wide range of performance requirement. Adequate stiffness and modal are the basis to ensure the vehicle’s performance of vibration noise. Simultaneously, in order to reduce energy consumption and cost, the lightweight design of the white body has become the mainstream. In this paper, the optimization design is conducted for stiffness and modal of a commercial vehicle’s white body based on the theory of the finite element size sensitivity optimization design. Firstly, build the finite element model of a vehicle’s white body and analyze its stiffness and modal. Some changes were made to the car-body’s partial structure according to the distributing of strain energy achieved from above analysis, which improved the car-body’s dynamic and static performance initially. Secondly, choose panels needed to be optimized by reference to the density of strain energy and panels’ mass. Then, the car-body’s structure was optimized using panels’ thickness as design variables, stiffness and modal frequencies as constrains and minimizing weight of white car-body as objective. After the analysis of the result, modal separation was put forward to improve the quality of this finite element optimization design model. Finally, the car-body’s stiffness and mode nature entirely satisfied the requirements with car-body’s weight decreased.