Structural optimization of product families subjected to multiple crash load cases

This paper discusses the problem of structural optimization of product families subjected to multiple load cases, evaluated by computationally costly finite element analysis. Product families generally have a complex composition of shared components that makes individual product optimization difficult as the relation between the shared variables is not always intuitive. More optimal is to treat the problem as a product family optimization problem. Though, for product families subjected to multiple and computationally costly crash loads, the optimization problem takes too long time to solve with traditional methods. Therefore, a new optimization algorithm is presented that decomposes the family problem into sub-problems and iteratively reduces the number of sub-problems, decouple and solve them. The algorithm is applicable for module based product families with predefined composition of generalized commonality, subjected to multiple load cases that can be analyzed separately. The problem reduction is performed by only considering the constraints that are critical in the optimal solution. Therefore the optimization algorithm is called the Critical Constraint Method, CCM. Finally the CCM algorithm is evaluated by two product family optimization problems.