Material Selection and Structural Optimization for Lightweight Truck Trailer Design

Abstract

This paper investigates options for light-weighting truck trailers through a combination of material selection and structural optimisation. Critical chassis design load cases were established, and a parametric finite element model of a typical European-style 13.5 m long truck trailer built from steel I-beams was developed. The model has been used to show that existing longitudinal steel I-beams could be reduced in weight by 28% (140 kg) through shape optimisation alone. The model was expanded to analyse holistic composite trailer structures. It showed that up to 67% (1,326 kg) of weight could be saved by executing shape and material optimisation in unison. The approach highlights that design through parametric analysis allows for many different structural configurations to be assessed in terms of both mechanical performance and material cost. This facilitates the construction of a theoretical design space of a lightweight chassis, clarifying the weight reduction limits that could be achieved with lightweight materials and structural optimisation. The lightweight trailer chassis designs proposed here are also compared against a portfolio of shorter-term strategies for trailer lightweighting. These strategies are poised to have an increasingly important role in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of the road freight industry.

Review of balsa core sandwich composite structures

“…The microstructure of balsa determines its structural anisotropy and mechanical properties [5,35,57,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79]. Balsa wood has a high aspect ratio closed-cell microstructure, as shown in Figure 8.…”

“…The mechanical properties of core materials have a strong influence on many of the loadbearing properties of sandwich structures. The stiffness and strength properties of balsa (of different densities) have been extensively investigated for various load conditions, including shear [35,40,73,76,[82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89], compression [5,35,54,55,57,73,76,78,83,87,[89][90][91][92],…”

“…Sandwich structures with a balsa core are often used in engineering applications to exploit these high specific flexural properties. Hence, a large body of research on sandwich structures with an end-grain balsa core has focused on understanding and improving flexural performance[16,29,35,40,60,62,69,82,83,86,89,93,.…”

Energy Storage Structural Composites with Integrated Lithium‐Ion Batteries: A Review

“…Structural energy storage composites that integrate lithium‐ion batteries also have potential applications in the light‐weighting of future electric heavy goods vehicles. [ 86,87 ] One major issue that requires more research is the safety implications of panels containing distributed arrays of lithium‐ion batteries; this is discussed further in Section 5.2.4.…”

A Hybrid Multi-Objective Optimization Method Based on NSGA-II Algorithm and Entropy Weighted TOPSIS for Lightweight Design of Dump Truck Carriage

“…The lightweight commercial vehicle structure makes it able to carry much more cargo without increasing its overall weight [5]. High strength steel has been widely used in commercial vehicle structures since it shows an attractive combination of mass reduction potential and material cost saving [6][7][8]. Therefore, optimization design is necessary for the development process of commercial vehicle components to achieve the appropriate distribution of high-strength steel in the structure for avoiding additional cost.…”