Performance Analysis on 3D Printed Beak-Shaped Automotive Tail Fin Filled with Honeycomb Cellular Structure

The concept of “bionic design” has driven the developments of automotive design. In this paper, a novel beak-shaped automotive tail fin with honeycomb cellular structure is proposed based on the idea of “bionic design”. Beak-shaped appearance is utilized to meet the requirement of aerodynamics performance, inner honeycomb cellular structure is filled to achieve more lightweight space. This paper starts from the establishment of three dimensional (3D) model based on the real characteristics of sparrow’s beak. On this basis, aerodynamic performances of novel beak-shaped tail fin and conventional shark tail fin are analyzed by experiment. Finally, the stiffness and modal analyses of solid beak-shaped tail fin and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin are carried out respectively. The results indicate that the deformation of solid beak-shaped tail fin and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin satisfy the basic requirements. In addition, the first order modal frequencies of solid and honeycomb beak-shaped tail fins are both far away from body vibration frequency and effectively avoid resonance. Compared with solid beak-shaped tail fin, the weight of honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin decreases by about 25%. Thus, the novel honeycomb beak-shaped tail fin proposed in this work demonstrates outstanding performance in terms of aerodynamic performances, structural stiffness enhancement and weight reduction.