I am optimizing the car frame by considering the entire design mass available with the help of Optistruct (you can imagine it as a hollow solid car body, separated into three compartments (first for engine, second for driver and seats and third for some payload). The parameters I set for the optimization are as follows:
Boundary Conditions: Fixed support at fours wheel connections
Forces: Bending, Torsional, lateral (braking) and gravitational forces
Design variable: Element Density
Design constraint: Static displacement for multiple load cases with an upper bound of 60mm.
Objective: Minimum Mass
Optimization Controls: Minimum Member size = 60mm, Discrete = 2, MATINIT = 0.6 and MINDENS = 0.00001
With these optimization formulation and controls, I am getting load paths of the car frame in the vertical directions but not in the horizontal direction.
Could anyone please explain me what am I missing in the formulation? or Is there any other methods/ controls through which I can improve my optimization to find proper loadpaths?
