Abstract
A relentless paradigm switch in the automotive industry is being witnessed, where traditional combustion engines are progressively replacing with electric counterparts. In order to compensate for heavy electric engine technology, plastic components used in the interior parts of electric vehicles seems to be a reasonable strategy aligned with the lightweight trend as the automotive industry’s top priority. Extremely thin plastic components (ultra-lightweight) attached to ribs-based architectures have been identified as an adequate solution offering a good balance between lightweight and structural/vibrational response of the overall composition. Still, they may yield detrimental features regarding thermal-induced deformations (i.e., warpage and shrinkage) associated with the typical mold injection process for their manufacturing. This paper uses topology optimization to determine the precise location of the added rib architecture system for enhanced vibration response of the overall plastic component (thin original plastic part and ribs architecture). Following a constant mass criterion, the topology optimization-driven design of the additional material is replaced with a more convenient ribs-based architecture component, showing a reasonable similarity from a vibration standpoint. The component in its initial state (without some ribs-based architecture) shows a vibration response of 16.69 Hz. Once the topology optimization is applied, a significant improvement is observed since a value of 26.05 Hz is obtained. At a postprocessing stage, the design is analyzed and subjected to typical static loading cases to verify its stiffness properties, getting a significant displacement reduction from 7.68 to 3.51 mm. Finally, the design implementation of a warpage and shrinkage analysis confirmed that the final design was not adversely affected according to standard considerations.
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