Patent ID: 8755923

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for generating a body structure comprising: defining a product design having a geometry for a plurality of body components, and a load set having multiple load cases; assigning a spatial orientation within the product design, a material property and a mechanical property to each of the plurality of body components and generating a first body configuration; performing a first topology optimization in a first processor using the first body configuration, a constraint set defining a boundary condition for the first body configuration and at least one of (i) the load set and (ii) a mass fraction set to compute a load path value for each of the plurality of body components and generating a second body configuration; ranking each of the load path values and separating the second body configuration into a subset of critical body components and a subset of non-critical body components, wherein a critical body component has a load path value above a threshold value; assigning a set of parametric design variables including a spatial location, a geometry, a gauge and a grade to each of the critical body components based on the load path values therefor; performing a second optimization in a second processor using the subset of critical body components, a constraint set defining a boundary condition for the subset of critical body components and the load set to generate an optimized subset of critical body components, wherein the second optimization includes: (a) performing a low fidelity optimization for the geometry, the gauge and the grade of the critical body components to define a cross-sectional profile, a thickness and a material type for each of the critical body components and for the spatial location of the critical body components to define an initial location for each of the critical body components for an initial optimized subset of critical body components, wherein the geometry, gauge, grade and initial location are simultaneously optimized for at least one performance variable; (b) performing a high fidelity optimization for the mass of each of the critical body components while maintaining the at least one performance variable to define a final optimized subset of body components; and (c) generating a first datafile including computer aided design data and a bill of materials for the final optimized subset of body components; combining the final optimized subset of critical body components with the subset of non-critical body components and generating a final body configuration, wherein the subset of critical body components have been optimized for performance and weight; and generating a second datafile including computer aided data and a bill of materials for the final body configuration.