Vehicle Component Layout With Shape Morphing: An Initial Study

Abstract

This work focuses on incorporating component shape design into a vehicle configuration design or layout process. A concurrent design process consisting of performing layout design and simultaneous shape morphing of some select components is adopted to replace the traditional sequential design approach. The objective is to improve design efficiency and reduce design cost. Two important issues in the packing optimization with shape morphing problem are identified and studied: the morphing and the optimization. A parameterization-based morphing method and a mesh-based morphing method are implemented, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. To efficiently solve this complex problem, it is proposed to decompose it into a bi-level formulation: system level and component level. At the system level, the given functional objectives of the layout design problem are optimized with respect to component positions and orientations. At the component level, the shape of select components is morphed to minimize the overlap with other objects and the enclosure. By iterating between these two levels, the original problem is solved. This bi-level approach is intended to overcome the complexity of performing the placement simultaneously with the shape morphing.