eSHADOW

eSHADOW ~ Electrified Structural Hybrid Automotive Developments for Optimised Weight

eSHADOW is a Ford led collaborative industry research project that aims to focus on the development of hybrid material structural engineering tools to promote lightweight design and verification for Product Development processes. The research will be conducted with a total of three UK industry based partners and an academic partner, who will develop key design tools to allow UK companies to leverage the next generation product development and training capability.

The eSHADOW project will develop lightweight multi-material solutions for rolling chassis ladder frames to improve vehicle efficiency and promote the adoption of zero emission vehicle architectures. Specifically, using a hybrid material combination of carbon-fibre reinforced polymer composite and alloys in a volume manufacturing process, weight savings of over 30% as compared to conventional all steel systems will be achieved and these step reductions in vehicle mass will promote the adoption of EV technologies.

During the project, the team will demonstrate a new approach for engineering practices that enable the next generation electrified vehicle technologies to be developed. Reducing the reliance on traditional engineering and materials will provide the efficiencies needed to provide a class leading weight optimisation for major CO2 reduction and simultaneous payload increase for commercial vehicles which can translate to all body on frame vehicles. The underpinning predictive design capabilities will be developed within the project, enabling the formulation of reliable digital design tools to accurately predict the performance, durability and failure of hybrid material structures in dynamic chassis applications.

The current development methodology relies heavily on known technology and materials. Lightweighting is restricted to optimisation of steel and aluminium components. This approach limits capability to reduce weight significantly. Due to increasing complexity and technology, there is a necessity for a pragmatic approach to lightweighting; to introduce hybrid structures that utilise the right material in the right location.

A candidate affordable ladder frame (Ford Ranger) will be developed via multiple design iterations, then optimised and demonstrated with the production of several full-size ladder frames and the performance of this demonstrator frame will be evaluated against all relevant benchmarks. Physical test data will enable the validation of the newly formulated predictive design tools.