Topology Optimization of Gear shifter Housing and Contact Benchmarks

Sammanfattning: In automotive component design criteria such as weight, strength, stiffness, manufacturing cost are sensitive issues for boosting its performance which in turn has direct impact on fuel economy and cost.   This thesis deals with the design of gear shifter housing for Volkswagen car by using modern topology optimization techniques to the existing design. gear shifter housing holds the shifting mechanism and guides the lever to select the respective gear for different speed. Optimizing the design in terms of topology, material and structural is very important in arriving at practical solution.   To determine the optimum material layout distribution of material within the component with given set of loads and boundary conditions by placing a constrain on volume by minimizing sum of weighted compliance as well as maximizing lowest eigen value frequency. The process starts by applying loads to the gear shifter and constraining it in all directions thereby making the gear shifter a stiff design which can withstand loads from all direction. Boundary conditions play a major role in designing the component geometry.   Contact formulation has been complex task from several years. Optimization with contact for minimizing the volume by maintaining uniform deformation between  contact surfaces between two commercial softwares, HyperWorks V10.0 and TOPO4ABQ has been compared with benchmarks.   By using these techniques weight reduction has been achieved in automobile gear shifter housing and benchmarks with contact condition had been compared using Altair OptiStruct V10.0 and TOPO4ABQ by Niclas Strömberg.