THE SECRET TO EFFICIENCY: MULTI-DISCIPLINARY OPTIMIZATION (MDO)

An in depth look at how Multi-Disciplinary Optimization (MDO) techniques enable automotive OEMs to achieve efficiency and mass savings

- Shirin Hameed

Increasing emphasis and high expectation on the fuel economy stand-ards has pushed automotive OEMs globally to optimize their vehicle platforms. Fuel economy standards have to be achieved with holistically balancing safety, NVH and durability performance regulation and requirements. With competitive markets and compressed time to market needs, OEMs are looking for technologies that enable them to cut short their development time or make their current platforms more efficient. All this of course, has to be achieved with no degradation of performance. Another factor that is to be considered is that the above must be achieved with minimum packaging and tooling changes- if these can be kept constant while rolling out a new product line, it would be an excellent saving mechanism for any automotive manufacturer.

One place that can have a significant direct impact is to reduce weight from the BIW and chassis of a vehicle. Techniques like full vehicle parameterization and Multi-Disciplinary Optimization (MDO) can be utilized in shaving off the weight, keeping the other parameters constant.

MDO IN VEHICLE DEVELOPMENT