Benefits of High Performance Computing in the Design of Lightweight Army Vehicle Components

The insertion of lightweight composite materials in the applications of military vehicle chassis components has the potential of significantly reducing vehicle weight and improves its durability, life, and reliability. The use of hybrid material (composites wrapped over metal) in a double A-Arm susp...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Abumeri, G, Knouff, B K, Lamb, D, Hudak, D, Graybill, R
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
COMPOSITE MATERIALS
COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN
Computer Programming and Software
COMPUTING SPEED
FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS
HPC(HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING)
HYBRID MATERIALS
HYBRID SYSTEMS
LIGHTWEIGHT
Mfg & Industrial Eng & Control of Product Sys
MILITARY VEHICLES
OPTIMIZATION
PFA(PROGRESSIVE FAILURE ANALYSIS)
RUN TIME REDUCTION
Surface Transportation and Equipment
VEHICLE CHASSIS COMPONENTS
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Summary:The insertion of lightweight composite materials in the applications of military vehicle chassis components has the potential of significantly reducing vehicle weight and improves its durability, life, and reliability. The use of hybrid material (composites wrapped over metal) in a double A-Arm suspension of a HMMWV resulted in a weight reduction of 33% as compared to that made from all steel construction. The shapes of the hybrid composite control arms were tailored to produce stiffness that is at least equivalent to the one obtained from a unit made from all steel construction. The double A-Arm unit was evaluated for reliability and durability under static and fatigue loading. With optimization and use of hybrid material, the static ultimate load and fatigue life were improved by 1.2 and 1.75 times, respectively, as compared to all steel design. The redesign required repeated progressive failure analysis (PFA) evaluations to determine load limits coupled with optimization. In addition to performing robust design of the suspension unit with advanced hybrid composites materials, benefits from high performance computing (HPC) with respect to run time reduction were evaluated. It was concluded that HPC can reduce the run time for PFA by more than 50% only for structures requiring the use of large finite element (FE) models (larger than 100,000 elements). Presented at the Army Science Conference (27), Orlando, FL on 29 Nov-2 Dec 2010. Prepared in collaboration with Alpha STAR Corp, Long Beach, CA; Composites DOC, Massillon, OH; Ohio State University Super Computing Center, Columbus, OH; and USC Information Sciences Institute, Arlington, VA. The original document contains color images.