Nowadays, due to the negative effect of vehicle emissions on human health, the trends in automotive industry are orientated towards the reduction of fuel consumption. An effective solution to reduce fuel consumption can be achieved indirectly by reducing the mass of entire vehicle. This requires the development of lighter optimized components, which have to fulfill all the requirements and expected life time. In this master thesis the process of topological optimization will be presented for the design of the alternator bracket. Topological optimization presents a powerful numerical tool to predict optimal distribution of material according to deformation and stress distribution within given component. The topological optimization is performed using finite element numerical model. The used numerical procedure is validated by comparing numerically and experimentally obtained modal parameters of the final optimized structure.
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