Topology optimization of a swing arm for a track driven vechile
Abstract: The development in additive manufacturing methods has cleared the path for topology optimizationby making it possible to produce complex geometries, which would not be possible to produce bytraditional manufacturing methods. Topology optimization uses iterative structural computations tond an optimal material distribution given a maximum optimization domain, load cases and/or otherstructural criteria. The relation between retained mass and structural performance of a swing armfor the vehicle BvS10 was examined for two different materials. The first material was an estimate of an additive manufactured material and the other for a high structural steel. Given the extreme load cases, the geometrical limits of the swing arm and by specifying how much mass was to be retained the stiffness was to be maximized. The optimization was performed using an elastic material model in thecommercial software ANSYS. This elastic material models was based on standard material parameters of steel. Three geometries were generated, namely OG100, OG90 and OG80, which corresponded to 101 %, 87 % and 81 % of the mass of the original swing arm, respectively. The optimization procedurewas combined with geometry modications in SpaceClaim to simplify the obtained geometries. All these geometries consisted of a hollow geometry with a greater width compared to the original geometry. The geometries were then evaluated using multilinear plastic material models based on respective material. Using the additive manufactured material model no generated geometry could perform structurally better than the original swing arm. This indicates that greater material properties must be obtainedin order to be able to reduce the weight of the swing arm. By using the material properties of the highstructural steel, it was found that at least 31.3 kg per vehicle could be reduced by using the optimizedgeometry OG80, and still not perform structurally worse than of the original swing arm.
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