Lightweight Design And Research For Balance-axle Brackets Of Heavy-duty Commercial Truck

With growing number of cars all over the world, environmental pollution and energyshortages has become increasingly severe problems to cope with. Research and developmenton energy saving light-weighted vehicles has become a trend in today’s automotive industry.Therefore, lightweight designing for cars, when the cars’ safety performance is guaranteed,has important theoretical and practical value. However, to design light-weighted cars, theapplication of new material and new manufacturing process are greatly constrained by limitedcapital and technology, thus structural optimization design become the most widely usedmethod to achieve lightweight of cars.In this paper, further researches on problems of structural optimization design (one ofautomotive lightweight designs), including theories and methods of structural optimizationdesign, especially on topological optimization design of structure, has been carried out. Itconcluded a lightweight design scheme based on structural topological optimization design.During the research, finite element analysis methods and finite element analysis softwareANSYS Workbench has been applied to study the structural lightweight design of a heavycommercial vehicle’s balance-axis brackets. The followings are the main work during theresearch of this subject:Firstly, analysis for the function of the balance-axis brackets in a balanced suspensionand its operating conditions had been done. The force acting on the balance-axis bracketsunder various conditions was determined. The working performance of the balance-axisbrackets under various conditions was simulated by establishing a three-dimensional solidmodel and a finite element model of it. Finite element analysis of static and dynamiccharacteristics of it and an analysis and evaluation of its structure and performance had been made.Secondly, based on variable density method, one of structural topological optimizationmethods, a finite element model of initial structure of the balance-axis bearing wasestablished and Shape Optimization module of ANSYS Workbench was applied to maketopological structure optimization analysis. Based on topological analysis, structurallightweight optimization design for balance-axis brackets was done. Finite element analysis ofthe optimized balance-axis brackets and comparison of its performance under the same loadsand constrains with the initial model before and after the optimization had been carried out.Results based on all above are: the optimized balance-axis brackets, with meeting enoughstrength, stiffness and vibration characteristics, has achieved a15.4%weight loss; Theoptimization design has been proved effective in weight reduction.