Frequency-based dynamic topology optimization methodology for improved door closing sound quality

Abstract

Door closing sound quality of a vehicle has become one of the most important customer-related quality metrics in the recent years. There has been a vast amount of information on the design parameters contributing to this attribute in the literature. Amongst them, damping pad on the door outer panel emerges as one of the most significant factors on the door closing sound quality. In this paper, we apply solid isotropic material with penalization topology optimization method to determine the optimum material layout for within a given volume constraint on a front door of a typical vehicle. The objective function of the topology optimization is chosen as the minimization of residual sum of squares of the accelerance of the door outer panel up to 200 Hz. The optimization problem is subject to design constraint to use a predetermined percentage of the full damping pad. The methodology is demonstrated on the finite element model of front door of a Toyota vehicle. Two optimization case studies using 60% and 45% of the damping pad on the door outer panel are introduced as a result of the application of the proposed topology optimization methodology. In addition, more manufacturable optimization configurations with the same % of the damping pad are suggested as a means for more feasible application by automotive original equipment manufacturers. All the optimization configurations are compared to each other on (i) accelerance spectrum up to 200 Hz, (ii) residual sum of squares of the accelerance, and (iii) weight of the damping pad. The results show that it is possible to improve the aforementioned metrics significantly by the application of topology optimization.