| In engineering, any design that needs to go into production has to be validated for its capability to withstand stress during operation, while ensuring that the design is as light and simple as possible. In this thesis work, it has been attempted to perform such validation on frame structures made with 3 dimensional beam elements and optimize their design by developing MATLAB codes for the same. These codes calculate the maximum stresses and displacements on a frame structure for any particular set of loading and optimize the design of the structure so as to not exceed the allowable stresses and displacements for the material, while keeping the design as light and simple as possible.; In order to substantiate this claim these codes were used for performing the validation and design optimization of several structures like 10-bar truss, 25-bar truss(3) and the Spare Tire Carrier structure to be used on US Army High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) (2). It was found that, with optimization a design with considerable weight savings could be obtained. |
