Optimization in automotive industry: Methods and applications

The need of the application of nonlinear programming in the field of CAE is widely accepted, nevertheless, it was not broadly applied in the past. One reason was that no suitable, easy-to-use software was available. Nowadays some software packages fulfill industrial requirements. One of these products is LMS OPTIMUS, which is in use at Volkswagen since three years. The fields of application are occupant and crash simulation and one- and three-dimensional CFD. The benefits and possibilities are presented. First of all different strategies of optimization are described with emphasis on the ideas of the algorithms. Examples from automotive industry are presented. For some of them different algorithms are compared. Optimization is applied to restraint systems simulated with MADYMO, to side impact, form optimization for frontal impact, optimization of a Diesel engine, and parameter identification of foam parameters.