Development of front suspension for an electric two-wheeled amphibious vehicle
Abstract: This master thesis is a part of a larger development project initiated at the department of Naval Architecture at KTH. The project goal is to design and manufacture a full scale proof-of-concept prototype of a electric powered two-wheeled amphibious vehicle. The focus of this thesis is the vehicle's front suspension system. In the present state, only a rough conceptual idea exist of the overall vehicle and its front suspension. The aim of this thesis is to analyze, evaluate and choose a suitable front suspension system and implement it into a detailed conceptual design. The rest of the vehicle is yet to be developed why the design boundaries for the front suspension are open-ended. This means that the design is likely to be revised in continued development. To deal with the open-ended boundaries a parameterized design is requested. An additional segment of the thesis is to produce parameterized development models used to derive the design. These models are considered as deliverables since they will be used when revising the front suspension for it to conform with the rest of the vehicle. With the information provided by the existing rough concept in terms of major components and vehicle architecture an estimation of the centre of gravity location have been carried out. This location enables a number of parameterized analytical models to be derived and utilized in the design of an optimized front suspension anti-dive geometry. The analytical models have been validated by creating a parametric ADAMS View model of the vehicle with a main purpose of simulating vehicle dynamics. The resulting design is a symmetric front swing arm suspension with a hub centre steering, torque arms and guide struts. An electric hub motor is also implemented in the wheel to provide tractive power in the front. The subsystem detailed conceptual design have been created in Solid Edge ST5 CAD software. Simplified finite element structural analysis in Ansys Workbench 14.0 is used to provide an initial estimate of the factor of safety for the parts. Because of the influence of the rest of the vehicle the proposed design delivered by this thesis is to be reviewed as a conceptual blueprint for the final front suspension. As there is no pre-existing design constraints from the rest of the vehicle the different subsystems are required to be parallel and iteratively developed due to their cross dependence.
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