All the loads generated by other components of heavy vehicle are transferred to its chassis. Chassis related failures are few but the damages to the safety of occupant are huge; sometimes it leads to fatal accidents. In order to overcome this, the chassis has to be optimized based on static and dynamic loads by ensuring a uniform distribution of stress and strain. The shape and cross section of the chassis gives a resistance to the above mentioned loads. The cross section of the chassis structure of all on-road vehicles is uniform despite the variable loads. In this work, variable cross section chassis of an on-road heavy vehicle is designed by keeping optimum sections. Bending moment of the chassis has been mathematically related with section modulus of the chassis. Genetic algorithm based procedures have been used to optimize the height, width and thickness of the chassis cross section. Coding in C language is used to automate the genetic algorithm procedures. For benchmark study, 3D models of optimized and existing chassis of an on-road heavy vehicle were developed. Finite element analysis reveals that the optimized chassis has less failure possibilities due to lower stress values and uniform distribution when compared to those from the model of existing chassis.
Chassis is the most important structural member in the on-road vehicles. All the loads generated by other components of the vehicle are transferred to chassis only. So the chassis structure has to be strong enough to withstand the loads. In order to overcome failure in the chassis structure, the variable cross-section chassis structure has to be designed based on the variable loads along the length of the vehicle. In this work genetic algorithm has been used to optimize the chassis cross section height, width and thickness by using their mathematical relationship with section modulus. The objective function is to optimize the section modulus based on bending moment equation. The optimization process is automated using C++language. The optimum values of the chassis cross section parameters were found to be efficient in the design of chassis.
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