Application of optimization techniques to vehicle design: A review

The work that has been done in the last decade or so in the application of optimization techniques to vehicle design is discussed. Much of the work reviewed deals with the design of body or suspension (chassis) components for reduced weight. Also reviewed are studies dealing with system optimization problems for improved functional performance, such as ride or handling. In reviewing the work on the use of optimization techniques, one notes the transition from the rare mention of the methods in the 70's to an increased effort in the early 80's. Efficient and convenient optimization and analysis tools still need to be developed so that they can be regularly applied in the early design stage of the vehicle development cycle to be most effective. Based on the reported applications, an attempt is made to assess the potential for automotive application of optimization techniques. The major issue involved remains the creation of quantifiable means of analysis to be used in vehicle design. The conventional process of vehicle design still contains much experience-based input because it has not yet proven possible to quantify all important constraints. This restraint on the part of the analysis will continue to be a major limiting factor in application of optimization to vehicle design

Geometric Morphology of Granular Materials

We present a new method to transform the spectral pixel information of a micrograph into an affine geometric description, which allows us to analyze the morphology of granular materials. We use spectral and pulse-coupled neural network based segmentation techniques to generate blobs, and a newly developed algorithm to extract dilated contours. A constrained Delaunay tesselation of the contour points results in a triangular mesh. This mesh is the basic ingredient of the Chodal Axis Transform, which provides a morphological decomposition of shapes. Such decomposition allows for grain separation and the efficient computation of the statistical features of granular materials.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figures. For more information visit http://www.nis.lanl.gov/~bschlei/labvis/index.htm