Integrated design for body in white fabricated by additive manufacturing and its mechanical performance analysis

With the development of additive manufacturing technology, the concept of integrated design has been introduced and deeply involved in the research of body design. In this paper, by analyzing the structural characteristics of the electric vehicle body, we designed a body in white with the additive manufacturing process, and analyzed its mechanical properties through finite element method. According to the structural characteristics of the body, the integrated structure was modeled in three dimensions using CATIA. For the mechanical properties of the body, the strength and stiffness of the body structure were simulated and analyzed based on ANSYS Workbench. The results show that for the strength of the body, the maximum stress of the simulation results was compared with the permissible stress, and the maximum stress was calculated to be less than the permissible stress under each working condition. For the body stiffness, the displacement of the body deformation was used to measure, and the deformation of the body was analyzed to be small. Finally, simulated and optimized the modal frequency of the body structure to conclude the feasibility of the additively integrated body structure design.