Coventry-based casting firm Sarginsons Industries has released designs which have taken an existing cast automotive subframe that was optimized for weight in 2022, being reduced from 28 kg to 15 kg.
The designs have been made from new AI-driven software that is under development to demonstrate that automotive aluminium parts can have their mass reduced without weakening mechanical integrity.
The design shows where excess aluminium has been removed – emphasizing the software’s ability to simulate the varying mechanical properties of a part to put the right material in the right place.
Sarginsons is aiming to produce the first physical casting using this technology by summer.
The designs are the early results of the Performance Integrated Vehicle Optimization Technology project (PIVOT), which Sarginsons is leading with its partners after receiving a six-million-pound-matched grant from the Advanced Propulsion Centre and Innovate UK.
Gavin Shipley, Technical Director at Sarginsons, said: “The designs don’t just look extraordinary, but by being 50% lighter, they are extraordinary.
We have managed to overcome the complexities of simulating the yield, tensile strength and elongation of cast components. We can now predict – on a point-by-point basis across the entire form of the casting – its mechanical performance. This allows for true vehicle crash performance to be simulated for the first time.
The ability to simulate and optimize casting performance at such a granular level means we can now produce organic, highly optimized designs that were previously beyond human imagination.
The castings are also designed using secondary, fully-recycled aluminium for the first time, meaning that the PIVOT research could also represent the single biggest step forward in vehicular carbon reduction since the advent of the electric car – whilst dramatically reducing the need for environmentally damaging extractive mining.
The combined effect of all this technology is that we can finally fully exploit the full potential of liquid metal engineering to create almost any shape or size of component, with no loss of performance.
That is an exciting prospect, as we are paving the way for cars, planes, trains and drones to utilize this technology in the future to make them lighter, greener and more cost-effective.”
For more information about the PIVOT research visit
www.sarginsons.com.
