Strength Analysis And Test Of All-purpose Body Of 8×8 All Terrain Vehicles

This paper focuses on performing the strength and rigidity analysis of the bodies and weapon support frames of the 8x8 light all terrain vehicles equipped with different weapons, with the emphasis on analyzing the bodies and weapon support frames of a rocket artillery vehicle and a fast-firing gun vehicle,improving their structures and studying the finite element analysis method which is applicable to the analysis of similar vehicle bodies and weapon support frames.Having finalized the design of the 8x8 light all terrain vehicle, it is decided that different weapons, such as fast-firing gun, mortar, anti-tank guided missile, rocket artillery, recoilless rifle, anti-aircraft gun, anti-tank rocket and anti-aircraft guided missile, are mounted on the vehicle without making a major change of the design of the vehicle body. The influences of the weapon recoiling force on the vehicle body and weapon support frame strength and rigidity should be paid a heavy attention in those vehicle developments. This paper pays a major attention to studying the finite element analysis of the bodies and weapon support frames of the rocket artillery and fast-firing gun because their recoil force are comparatively large and their designs are typical. Firstly, the 3D numerical models of bodies and weapon support frames were built with CATIA software. Then, the model was input into HyperMesh, in which the midsurfaces of the body and weapon support frame was drawn. The thin wall components, such as the body, weapon support frame and rib reinforcements, were modeled with plate and shell elements and the housings of the hub transmissions were modeled with tetrahedron elements. The appropriate restraints were applied to the finite element model according to the major finite element analysis objectives(sdudying the strength and rigidity of the body and weapon support frame). And finally, the built finite element model of the body and weapon support frame was input into MSC.Nastran software to perform the calculation. And MSC.Patran software was applied to perform post-processing of the results. In order to verify the finite element analysis results, the shooting test of the rocket artillery was performed and the strain signals were simultaneously measured. And it was found that most errors between the results measured in the test and obtained with the finite element analysis were smaller than 20%, indicating that the analysis method was reasonale.The improvement recommendations for the body and weapon support frame of the fast-firing gun were presented, which was based on the finite element analysis(FEA) results. The finite element models of the improved bodies and weapon support frames according to the recommendations were built and the analysis results indicated that they could meet the strength and rigidity requirements.The method of test simulating the 8x8 all terrain vehicle airdrop was presented according to the requirements of airdrop of the vehicle. The acceleration signals on some vehicle key points were measured both in the simulation test and the real airdrop of the vehicle. The acceleration signal processing revealed that all the errors between the maximum accelerations measured in the two kinds of tests above were smaller than 20%. Thus the presented method of test simulating the airdrop was reasonable, which can be applied to provide the input data for performing the airdrop analysis and verifying the whole airdrop system.