International Journal of Engineering and Technology

Nowadays, automotive industry is continuing to strive for light weight vehicle in improving fuel efficiency and emissions reduction. To produce a better performance car it is important to design vehicles with optimum weight. In order to reduce the weight of vehicle without sacrificing its integrity, this project aims to employ topology optimization technique to propose an optimal design of an automotive component in early phase of product development. In this project the material used for an existing brake pedal is unchanged as this study focuses on reducing weight of existing brake pedal without material substitution. The digital model of an existing brake pedal was generated using CATIA V5 solid modelling software. Topology optimization was performed by using Altair Optistruct software under linear static stress analysis. Finally, a new light weight design brake pedal is proposed. The result of the study shows that the weight of a new designed brake pedal was 22% less as compared to an existing brake pedal without sacrificing its performance requirement.