Emission norms across the world are getting more and more stringent day by day, in pursuit of saving the mother Earth. Automotive industry is quick to respond to this huge challenge. One solution lies in making the vehicles lighter. That's why scope of the lightweight materials is more and more realized and explored during the last decade. One of the front runners in the lightweight material is Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP). CFRP comes with own challenges in its understanding, designing and engineering. For effective use of the CFRP material, from a design and mass point of view, it has to be optimized in such a way that every section and layup is utilized to its maximum potential. Current paper demonstrates the multi-step optimization approach used in a design and development of car hood. Initial assessment of the hood showed that few attributes were falling short of the requirement targets, and could only be achieved with a mass penalty. After interaction with respective teams, scope for the optimization is realized. Topology optimization is utilized to derive the right structure from available design space, the reinforcer patterns and sections are worked out accordingly. Next step followed is the free-size optimization. Basic composite learnings are implemented in the development process. Results are used to decide the ply layups in different hood frame regions. Finally, hood model with the derived sections and ply information is updated for the manufacturing considerations and assessed for multiple domain performance.
