In light of volatile fuel prices and tightening emissions regulations, automobile manufacturers have been increasingly considering the use of light-weight magnesium in their efforts to improve fuel economy. While mainly used in minor components now, greater weight savings lie in its replacement of heavier structural components now made of extruded aluminum and stamped steel. However, as a material with generally lower mechanical properties on a volumetric basis and higher unit materials cost, magnesium introduces a strength-weight tradeoff with non-obvious total cost implications. Accordingly, manufacturers could greatly benefit from a method of systematically studying this weight-strength relationship in cost terms for extruded magnesium beams in a variety of loading scenarios. In this paper, we describe the development of an interface within a Process Based Cost Model of the extrusion process for quantifying these relationships on user defined parts. This interface consists of Visual Basic functions which dynamically compute dimensions of hollow Mg or Al extruded tubes necessary to achieve some strength constraint, input them into the cost model, and return the results.
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