A method for optimizing automotive doors under multiple criteria involving the side impact, stiffness, natural frequency, and structure weight is presented. Metamodeling technique is employed to construct approximations to replace the high computational simulation models. The approximating functions for stiffness and natural frequency are constructed using Taylor series approximation. Three popular approximation techniques,i.e.polynomial response surface (PRS), stepwise regression (SR), and Kriging are studied on their accuracy in the construction of side impact functions. Uniform design is employed to sample the design space of the door impact analysis. The optimization problem is solved by a multi-objective genetic algorithm. It is found that SR technique is superior to PRS and Kriging techniques in terms of accuracy in this study. The numerical results demonstrate that the method successfully generates a well-spread Pareto optimal set. From this Pareto optimal set, decision makers can select the most suitable design according to the vehicle program and its application.
