Parametric Method for Applications in Vehicle Design 2005-01-1564

Vehicle product development is a long and complex engineering process, from early conceptual design to final detailed design. Each design stage involves various iterations of design, analysis, validation, and confirmation. Computer tools are commonly used for modeling and simulation of vehicle systems, subassemblies and components. Different prototypes are often created and physical tests are deployed to validate the design. During early program stages, vehicle design information is scattered, incomplete and constantly changing, which makes the vehicle design very difficult. Without the vehicle design (most commonly in CAD format in recent history of vehicle design), limited engineering analysis or validation can be performed. It becomes the bottleneck for the early vehicle engineering decision-making. A parametric modeling method has been developed to quickly generate coarse vehicle geometry early in the design process, including BIW and interior trim surfaces based on the limited available information. This allows increased number of iterations at early design stages and has shown to significantly reduce the time conventionally required for modeling.