High Specific Strength Steel as a Better Material for Heavy Vehicle Chassis

The chassis frame forms the foundation of a heavy vehicle which carries the load for all designed operating conditions. An important consideration in chassis design is adequate bending stiffness alongside strength for better handling characteristics. Maximum shear stress and deformation are the important criteria in chassis design. The present paper is on the planning of heavy vehicle chassis and its strength and rigidity analysis. In the analysis under identical load conditions, currently used chassis materials like structural steel, low tensile carbon steel and chrome-moly alloy steel are compared with high specific strength steel which can be an effective replacement material for the chassis. High specific strength steel (HSSS) has low density and possesses high strength and rigidity. The dimensions of an existing vehicle chassis of TATA LPT 2518 TC truck are taken for analysis. Rectangular Box type cross section has least deformation, so it is considered for analysis. Validation of design is done by applying the vertical loads acting on the main chassis member. The modelling and analysis are performed using SOLIDWORKS and ANSYS respectively. The results indicate that HSSS has the least deformation and stress induced and the proposed material provides enough strength and rigidity to the chassis