Advanced manufacturing and design techniques for lightweight structures

摘要

Six institutes at the Technische Universität Dortmund, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Technische Universität München have developed innovative manufacturing and design techniques dur-ing the past eight years in the course of the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TRIO, funded by the German Research Foundation. An aluminium lightweight structure based on the cabin motorcycle, BMW C1, was designed as a demonstration structure and manufactured within a flexible production line. This lightweight structure gives an outlook to future manufacturing methods for small scale production runs of urban vehicles. The techniques of design, extrusion, reinforcement, joining and handling (Fig. 1) are described in the following.