Design Considerations for Ladder Chassis of a Lightweight Vehicle

C.O Mgbemena; M.O Okongwu; A.O.A Ibhadode

C.O Mgbemena Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun
M.O Okongwu
A.O.A Ibhadode

Keywords: Chassis, Deformation, Maximum Shear Stress, Utility Vehicle, Von Mises.

Abstract

The chassis supports the body, the payload and other components linked to the body and forms the structural backbone of vehicles. This paper presents the design and static analysis of a lightweight utility vehicle chassis. The static analysis was conducted on a model of the ladder chassis developed from solid works. The ANSYS workbench was employed for the Finite Element Analysis. The results obtained show that deformation of the chassis was found to be within the safe limits according to deflection span ratio for the simply supported beam. The von Mises and maximum shear stresses obtained was found to be lower than the yield strength of the material.