A Methodological Approach Towards Multi-material Design of Automotive Components

Designing automotive multi-material components implies managing high degrees of freedom, various restrictions such as limited installation space as well as conflicting development goals such as weight reduction, mechanical performance and costs. However, there is no suitable approach for conceptual design which takes these aspects into consideration in a structured way. This paper presents a first methodological approach towards developing multi-material components which systematically reveals dependencies and relations between characteristics and properties. Combining Characteristics Property Modelling (CPM) and Property-Driven Development (PDD) with Extended Mapping Matrices (EMM) serves as a method to identify strategies to design concepts more purposefully.