We would like to express our appreciation to supervisor Ph.D. Håkan Carlsson at Altair for inspiration and guidance throughout the project. We would also like to thank Ph.D. Mats Sigvant at Volvo Cars Body Component for valuable information and insightful remarks. Our supervisors at the Division of Solid Mechanics, Ph.D. Mathias Wallin and Doctoral candidate Magnus Fredriksson, have provided us with helpful discussions and feedback throughout the project, thank you! Doctoral candidate Linus

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... son has also been helpful and provided essential information on sheet metal forming. We would also like to express our deepest gratitude to the staff at Altair for their help, support and everlasting patience. Without your assistance, this work would have been difficult to achieve. Lund, Abstract Today the casting structure of stamping tools is dimensioned according to standard guidelines. The main task of this thesis is to develop an alternative method of manufacturing stamping tools, which takes the structural response of the tool into account to produce a lightweight design. This is done by performing a topology optimization with the objective to improve the structural stiffness and to reduce the weight of the tool. The die is the only part of the stamping tool considered in the methodology generation. The method established can be applied to any other part of the stamping tool analogously, after the load cases of the part are determined. Two different load cases are applied to the die tool, one operation case and one transportation case, which are weighted equally when optimizing. A forming simulation is made using LS Dyna to obtain the load on the die during operation. The attained loads are, together with the loads affecting the die during transportation, applied to the die and a topology optimization is performed, using the software OptiStruct. A CAD model is set up from the result of the topology optimization. This CAD model is analysed and compared to the original die, i.e. the die that is in use today. When comparing the result of the analyses, the maximal displacement, the von Mises stresses and the weight of the die is considered. The final results show an overall more homogenous distribution of displacement, a reduction of the maximal displacement with around 30 % and a weight reduction of about 20 %. iii Abstract ii