Optimal design of differential mount using nature-inspired optimization methods

Abstract

Structural performance and lightweight design are a significant challenge in the automotive industry. Optimization methods are essential tools to overcome this challenge. Recently, nature-inspired optimization methods have been widely used to find optimum design variables for the weight reduction process. The objective of this study is to investigate the best differential mount design using nature-based optimum design techniques for weight reduction. The performances of the nature-based algorithms are tested using convergence speed, solution quality, and robustness to find the best design outlines. In order to examine the structural performance of the differential mount, static analyses are performed using the finite element method. In the first step of the optimization study, a sampling space is generated by the Latin hypercube sampling method. Then the radial basis function metamodeling technique is used to create the surrogate models. Finally, differential mount optimization is performed by using genetic algorithms (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), grey wolf optimizer (GWO), moth-flame optimization (MFO), ant lion optimizer (ALO) and dragonfly algorithm (DA), and the results are compared. All methods except PSO gave good and close results. Considering solution quality, robustness and convergence speed data, the best optimization methods were found to be MFO and ALO. As a result of the optimization, the differential mount weight is reduced by 14.6 wt.-% compared to the initial design.