Bachelor thesis:
Volvo S90 Limousine
I conducted my Bachelor's Thesis in Design and Product Development together with another student at Havd Group, in collaboration with Nilsson Special Vehicle in 2017.
A pre-study of the custom Volvo S90 limousine and the design of its new door panel.
The purpose was to come up with a new panel design that met the requirements of both production and design without compromising the aesthetics of the vehicle.
The thesis report can be found HERE
APROACH
Background studies > Requirements > Ideation > Evaluation > Visualisation
Project background
Nilsson Special Vehicle (NSV) is a company performing custom builds on different Volvo models, such as ambulances and limousines. In 2017, the production of a new Volvo S90 limousine was about to kick off, which is where this thesis came into the picture.
The Volvo S90 would need to be split in the middle and extended with another pair of doors to create the limousine model. At the time, NSV had an abundance of door panels that were no longer needed in a re-design project of Volvo v90. Thus, the idea of using these extra door panels, redesign them and implement them into the limousine was born.
Project moodboard
In order for the changes made to the panel to look as natural as possible, it was important that the inside of the new doors reflected the design of the other parts of the vehicle. One of the earliest tasks we performed was thus analyzing Volvo's design language and compiling a set of guiding moodboards that would visualize what we strived for and what the new door panels would have to reflect.
The manufacturing process
One of the next steps were to investigate the manufacturing process of both the original door panel and how the new limousine panel was to be rebuilt. Therefore, we did several educational visits and observations at different stakeholders and got a good understanding of the process. The old panel was also disassembled so that we could observe details of each component and research what parts could to be kept and which needed to be replaced by extended versions.
We found that larger plastic components like the carry-over to the right as well as most componentes displayed in the middle image could be reused. However, the lower frame was dispcarded as it needed to be longer to fit the larger limousine door. We started investigating how a new frame could be designed and manufactured in Havd's workshop using vacuum forming and what materials would be suitable.
Requirements
The initial study we did helped us in compiling a list of general requirements that the door panel would have to fulfill in order to be manufactured and aesthetically suit the rest of the vehicle. See the thesis report for the compete list and more information.
Picking materials
Using Granta Design's material analysis tool CES Edupack, we found that a suitable thermoplastic to vacuum form the lower frame in, in terms of Young's modulus and price, would be acrylonitrile butadiene styrene - ABS. We also found that a PVC based leather-like vinyl could be used to coat the new part to resemble the original aesthetics.
After the requirements list had been compiled, we entered the ideation phase where our goal was to come up with ideas on what the new panel could optimally look like.
IDEATION
Sketching the new panel
The images below display our initial concepts where the gray scale components are all original, the blue is a new vacuumed formed lower frame and the green represents a new vacuum formed waist rail. As you will see, most of the concepts keep the main original parts intact, but visualizes different ways in which the lower frame and the waist rail could be designed. One of the concepts include a yellow labeled waist rail which is an intact original component taken from the front door of a Volvo V90, although this was not part of the initial scope.
Evaluation
The ideas were presented at a workshop with representatives from both Havd and Nilsson Special Vehicle where our suggestions were evaluated and discussed. The feedback we received was very positive and the client saw potential in a numer of the ideas we had presented.
Second iteration
We also did a morphological matrix to merge all of the concept's best parts into a design that would fulfill the requirements in the best way possible.
In this concept, as seen above, the waist rail is reused from a Volvo V90's front door which saves both plastic, vinyl and work-load. The lower frame contains as little plastic as possible and the extension of the frame is located to the right for easier access to panel's components. In the end however, this was not the concept chosen by the companies who instead went with one of the more simpler designs, more similar to what they had been producing for other models.
Final concept
The final concept consists of a new lower frame and a new waist rail, both manufactured by vacuum forming in Havd's workshop and covered in leather-like vinyl. The aesthetics of the panel is very similar to that of the original component and all functionality, except being able to open the window, has been kept. The concept was visualized in Catia V5 together with a co-worker at Havd and further enhanced using Photoshop.
