Luxon Engineering Suspension Uprights

Posted on March 27, 2011 by io

Luxon Engineering designed and produced Suspension Uprights for race cars (link). They optimized the structure for 16 load-cases. The results are great, as 40% weight savings with 225% increase in stiffness. The parts were manufactured by CNC machining.

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Malaguti rear arm

Posted on March 24, 2011 by io

Malaguti (link) uses topology optimization for their motorcycle’s rear arm. Instead of giving all the load cases to the optimization software, they optimized the part for different load cases, and combined the results themselves, which seems like a reluctant to using topology optimization, when the software is capable of handling all the load cases.

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Industrial Design

Posted on March 24, 2011 by io

Luca Frattari from Faculty of Architecture University of Camerino (link) experimented on usage of topology optimization with industrial design. Chairs were designed and produced by Objet 3-D printing machines.

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Permobil – Swerea wheelchair linkage

Posted on March 22, 2011 by io

Swerea, a Swedish R&D company, developed a wheelchair linkage for Permobil utilising topology optimization (link). The original part was forged aluminium weighting 1.3 kg. Different manufacturing techniques were considered, aluminium high pressure die-cast part was the cheapest but did not offer any weight savings. Extruded aluminium part is nearly as cheap and offers 30% weight savings.

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Lanxess Clutch pedal

Posted on March 22, 2011 by io

Lanxess used topology optimization to develop a steel-Durethan hybrid (link) . Durethan is the trade name for Lanxess range of engineering thermoplastics based on polyamide 6 and polyamide 66. Glass fiber reinforced Durethan was used to form ribs inside the steel shell. The hybrid pedal is 300 grams lighter than the steel counterpart (30 % weight saving) . Also the optimized pedal is 100 grams lighter than the non-optimized one.

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Sacmi hydraulic press

Posted on March 21, 2011 by io

The hydraulic press by Sacmi (link1, link2) was designed using topology optimization.The topology optimized shape is displayed in the final product, which looks extraordinary for an industrial machine. The name of this series of presses is Android indeed.

The whole optimized structure and the real machine (yes it is real)

 

 

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ZF Ship Gearbox Housing

Posted on March 21, 2011 by io

ZF uses topology optimization to develop a Ship Gearbox Housing (link).

Optimization results (blue) and user interpretation

The design combines thrust bearing into the gearbox. Thrust bearing deals with the loads that arise from the propeller (or jet). So loads are huge. The special criteria that is wanted here is the displacement to be parallel so that the bearing is not abused. As seen from the results and interpretation above, optimization yielded heavy reinforcements on the side that is far from wall. The near wall side is lightly reinforced, so that the displacement remains parallel.

CAD interpretation of the optimization result

However as seen from the CAD interpretation, the near wall side is heavily reinforced, which seems contradictory to the parallel displacement requirement.

The casing in real life

 

 

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Concrete Aesthetics

Posted on March 21, 2011 by io

This article surveys topology optimization from an aesthetical and architectural point of view. The project was carried under the name of “Unikabeton – Industrial production of unique concrete elements via digital fabrication” with many contributers. The enterance page http://fluxstructures.net also contains intersting information and visuals.

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Formula SAE car bell crank

Posted on March 18, 2011 by io

Original component

As a master thesis study (link) a Formula SAE cars bell crank was topology optimized. The bell crank is highly stressed, the largest load acting on it being 3500 N. The cranks weight was reduced to 140 grams which is a 24% weight loss also the load required to plastic deform the component was increased to 15.9 kN which is 30% more that previous design. The optimized shape looks a lot like the classical cantilever optimized shape. The optimum shape was obtained with a draw direction constraint.

Optimized component

The bell-crank was milled from 7075-T6 aluminum alloy.

Design Space used for optimization

Some loadcases used

 

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Ricardo

Posted on March 18, 2011 by io

Ricardo, worlds leading engine and transmission developer, uses topology optimization to develop its products (link1, link2). The sample from the first article seems to be a production component and it is reported that the optimization decreases design iterations and increases stiffness. The optimization in the second article seems a bit raw, however provides insight to application of topology optimization to engine block.

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