A generic approach to capitalize manufacturing experience in design and optimization

As design changes in the production phase can be hundreds of times more costly than in the design phase, it is crucial to make sure that the designed product is actually manufacturable before start of production. To this aim nowadays often many manual iterations are needed between the designers and manufacturing experts, which leads to an inefficient design process and delayed time-to-market that in turn are detrimental for company competitiveness. Here we present the outline of a research effort to realize a substantially more integrated design process tailored towards both performance aspects and manufacturability. Key to this is the formalisation of Design for Manufacturing (DfM) rules within the functional CAD design stage. The traditional design approach is exemplified further in this work for the design of a gearbox housing for electric vehicle transmission systems. To realize substantial weight reduction without compromising performance, a novel multi-material design is proposed, constituting of both aluminum, to ensure structural integrity, and high performance polymer for additional structural integrity and leak-tightness under operating condition. Results shown include Topology Optimization (TO) under realistic loading conditions, scrutinizing material volume fraction boundary conditions and mesh sensitivity. Finally, some DfM rules and considerations in order to come to a manufacturable CAD design, are highlighted.