Synergic Product and Process Design for Additive Fabrication of Lightweight Vehicles

Additive manufacturing is even more capturing the interest of vehicle manufactures. Its adoption enables design potentials such as parts customization, lightweighting or functional integration. Deep adoption of additive manufacturing and integration of topology optimization design techniques enable the calculation of light components, while additive manufacturing makes it feasible by adding subsequent layers of material. Design for additive manufacturing guidelines address these challenges by enabling the build of such complex shapes thanks to parts consolidation and features integration. Several prototypes of such lightweight design concerning chassis, body, and structures have been provided, but the lack of structured and objective approaches limits the application in normal production. This work integrates Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) into the Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) approach for an effective adoption of selection of trade-off studies for the selection of best product variant and process setup. The trade-off involves KPIs related to structural product requirements and laser Powder Bed Fusion process cost estimation, to return functional components that address the best ratio between weight reduction and expected manufacturing cost. Proof of the method effectiveness and its application to lighten real components is demonstrated by applying the approach to reduce the weight of a steering support system for a Formula SAE race car. The objectivity of the trade-off promotes the extensive adoption to other vehicle components for substantial fuel efficiency improvement and emissions reduction perspectives.