Research On Automobile Style Design Under The Limitation Of Body Manufacturing Technology

The styling design is an essential work for car designers nowadays.Styling plays an important role in branding,added value,and competitive differentiation.During the design process,manufacturing technology is a key limitation for designers to realise their original design.A thorough understanding about manufacturing technology and related design methods helps designers to achieve their goals by avoiding mistakes and taking advantage of manufacturing knowledge.In this thesis,a systematic research on different manufacturing process and materials is made to achieve a summary on manufacturing technology's impact on car styling.Considering the largest differences among all manufacturing technologies are flat surfacing and curved surfacing,a qualitative research is made to find the design methods under these two scenarios,focusing on characteristic lines,face expression of cars,and some key styling areas.A summary of commons and differences between flat surfacing and curved surfacing in practices is concluded.Besides,two experiments are designed to verify the impacts of manufacturing technology on car styling.A quantitative experiment is designed to define “styling space” and to analyse the correlation among different styles.A significance test is conducted in a 3-dimension “styling space” to verify the impact of different manufacturing technologies.Based on the qualitative and quantitative research,the output is used in four different design projects including exterior design,interior design and colour design.The thesis starts from theoretical research by qualitative design analysis.With the help of a new mathematical model,qualitative experiments are conducted to verify the significance of impact.The research and the design practices will provide some references for the development of car styling in a manufacturing perspective.