Design Process of Light-weighted Fuel Cell Vehicle Body Frame

This paper presents a design process of light-weighted fuel cell vehicle (FCV) frame to meet design target of natural frequency in early design stage. At first, using validated FE model for the current design, thickness optimization was carried out . Next. optimization process, comprised of beam model size optimization, shell model design and shell model thickness optimization, was investigated for two frame types. In addition, in order to ensure hydrogen tanks safety against rear impact load, structural collapse characteristics was estimated for the rear frame model finally produced from the previous optimization process and, with the target of equal collapse characteristics to the current design model, structural modification with small weight increase was studied through static structural collapse analyses. The same attempt was applied to the front side frame. The results explain that the proposed process enables to design light-weighted frames with high structural performance in early stage.