Reliability optimisation of an electric bus frame orienting side impact safety and lightweight

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In this study, optimising design of an electrical bus frame for lightweight is carried out based on the surrogate model method while ensuring the side crashworthiness of the body frame. Eleven groups of design variables are determined for optimisation according to the relative sensitivity analysis. A high-precision surrogate model constructed by the methods of least squares regression (LSR), moving least squares (MLSM) and radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is chosen as the final optimisation model. A reliability optimisation scheme is proposed, formulated, solved and evaluated by FE simulations. It is revealed that after optimisation the lightweight objective has been achieved and most of the other performances of the bus body frame especially the side crashworthiness has been improved obviously as well.