Light Weight Design for a Concept Sports Car Using Composite Material

Abstract

Light weight design is critical to a sports car. In the study, a prototype of the newly developed modern classical concept sports car was presented. The design process followed the common vehicle design procedure starting from blue print, clay model and then vehicle build. The structure was designed and analyzed using Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools. A space frame design concept was proposed based on the topology optimization results. Carbon composite material was used for light weight structure design. Three-step design optimization process was proposed to use for the detailed composite vehicle structure design with the consideration of manufacturing constraints. The thickness, fiber orientation and stack sequence were obtained through the optimization process. Manufacturing constraints could be imposed to the optimization process in order to obtain a practical design that could be manufactured. A design with total structure weight of 296.7 kg was obtained. It was a much lighter design compared to the earlier metal structure design.