Thickness-based subdomian hybrid cellular automata algorithm for lightweight design of BIW under side collision

Abstract Body-in-white (BIW) is a typical frame structure formed by a great many thin-walled structures, and the optimal design of its lightweight and crashworthiness is a typical nonlinear dynamic response optimization problem with multiple design variables. Here, we propose a thickness-based subdomain hybrid cellular automata (T-SHCA) algorithm to solve the lightweight design of BIW under side collision, in which there are two loops: one is the outer loop to conduct crash finite element analysis, calculate output responses, and update internal energy density (IED) and target mass; the other is the inner loop to adjust cell thicknesses according to IEDs of current cell and its neighboring cells to make the actual mass of current cells converge to target mass. The concept of "subdomain cellular automata (SCA)" model was introduced, so that the T-SHCA can solve nonlinear dynamic response optimization in discrete and separated design spaces. The step IED target update rule and the cell thickness update rule based on a PID control strategy were implemented in the inner loop to improve the global optimal solution search capability and the robustness of the proposed algorithm, respectively. The thicknesses optimization of a BIW was carried out by the proposed method and a parallel efficient global optimization algorithm to verify its convergence and efficiency. The results show that the T-SHCA algorithm can be implemented to effectively solve nonlinear dynamic response structural optimization problem with many thickness variables in discrete and separated design spaces.