Consistently, weight reduction of vehicle parts is one of the most important issues. In particular, as the demand for electric vehicles is increasing, technological development for weight reduction is needed to improve fuel efficiency of electric vehicles equipped with heavy battery cells. The battery case is an important part of electric vehicle that protects the battery cell from external impact. In addition, the weight of battery case accounts for about 10% of the total weight of electric vehicles. So the purpose of this study is to propose the optimization method which is to reduce the weight of battery case. Firstly, crash analysis of front & side boundary condition was carried out to check performance of the battery case(Conventional model) and to select the parts to be optimized. Secondly, after selecting the parts to be optimized through the result data review about the internal energy and weight distribution for each part, 1st Optimization was carried out by reducing the thickness of the selected parts. Since the goal of this study is to derive a weight reduction model while maintaining an equivalent level of performance, analysis was carried out once again to verify the performance. The above process was repeated for 2nd and 3rd thickness optimization, and finally, weight reduction model(about 5%↓) was derived while maintaining an equivalent level of performance. To validate the performance of the weight reduction model, base model and weight reduction model were produced by aluminum extrusion and stamping method. The crash test was conducted on the front & side boundary conditions mentioned above, and as a result, it was confirmed that base model and weight reduction model have equivalent performance. Finally, a weight reduction model(about 5%↓) while maintaining an equivalent level of performance was derived through this optimization method.

Seojin Industrial: Geonhee Cheon, Jongbin Hong, Moonsub Song, Donghoon Kim, Heesang Gong; Eco-plastic: Teawon Kim, Gyuho Shim