Gone are the days when a product designer has to go through the repeat cycles of design & Analysis to ensure the optimized safety factor without being redundant in cost, strength or material. As the part of the final class project for the new course, Automated Mechanical Design under Prof. Robert MacCurdy, the project to topologically optimize a wheel disc was successfully completed by Shashwat Agarwal. The project aimed at auto-optimization of the simplified Topology of a wheel as per the usual load constraints under various different criteria like Minimum Stiffness, Max Strength & Min. Volume.

 

Using a novel, shape optimization plugin, Pareto works that was developed by a Prof. Suresh & his research team at the University of Wisconsin Madison, it deploys a SIMP based approach through Topological sensitivity which essentially helps in finding an optimum solution set with the much lesser number of Finite element analysis. It also uses the Tangled FEA to replace the negative Jacobian mesh elements with geometrically convex Quads. Using this Modified SIMP approach the Auto shape optimization results were more precise & a lot quicker.  The results were also validated & the prototype was 3d printed.

 

The entire cycle was repeated with 2 different materials. Properties of TPU were modeled to imitate a soft material whereas ABS was selected to optimize a wheel design made of stiffer/harder material. Attributes like quick processing time, accurate & verifiable results make the proposed process, the most suited scheme of shape optimization for the fast-paced industrial projects. Also, it demonstrates the inevitable advantages of the futuristic flexible airless wheel designs being pursued by the tyre manufacturers worldwide.