A performance-based design framework for enhancing decision-making at the conceptual phase of a motorcycle rear suspension development

The functional design of a motorcycle rear suspension has become a complex process which involves different engineering disciplines such as computer aided design, structural analysis or multibody simulations. As a consequence of this multidiciplinarity, its development process is surrounded by multiple inter-related aspects and uncertainties which can compromise the feasibility of the solutions and hence making it difficult to foresees a priori the most appropriated design directions. This paper proposes an integrated methodology that supports early stage design decision-making for motorcycle rear suspensions by providing a rapid generative mechanism of feasible solutions with performance feedback for multiple requirements. The proposed framework integrates an object-oriented representation of the rear suspension with an adaptative design space approach for enhancing the capability to generate a variety of feasible solutions. A generative system coupled with the NSGA-II algorithm is proposed as responsible for exploring and managing the optimal functional design. The workflow has been structured in such a way all the design actions are conducted automatically. A case study of a Premoto3 rear suspension design is included in order to illustrated the effectiveness of the presented framework.