Riassunto analitico
The present study has been carried out during the curricular internship at Dallara Automobili S.p.A. and, therefore, the information contained here is classified as confidential and its reproduction, without previous agreement, is not allowed.
The research activity has been performed with the aim to reduce the weight of two selected components of a Le Mans Prototype, without compromising their strength, without a significant increase of their cost and without modifying other parts of the car assembly.
The components under scrutiny were in particular the front brake disc bell and the rear brake disc bell. Due to the confidentiality of the project, the baseline components, and in particular the assemblies that they belong to, cannot be shown in this document, and therefore, they will be presented just in general terms.
The study has been performed, for each of the two components, using the following simplified iterative scheme:
- computation of the loads;
- realization of the CAD model;
- FEA simulation of the model;
- validation of the model.
In addition to that, the detailed manufacturing process analysis has been performed. In particular, the sequence of all the operations, and their related process parameters, needed for the creation of the final components, has been defined. The obtained list of operation has been subsequently implemented in a CAM software, obtaining the final instruction for the CNC machine.
In this way, the complete design process of the two disc bells, from the conceptual to the manufacturing phase, has been analysed and performed.
In order to obtain the best possible improvement of the parts, the optimization process briefly shown in the previous paragraphs, was not just limited to the topology of the part but it has been pointed out considering other two degrees of freedom: the material selection and the production process selection.
In fact, these three design parameters are strongly connected between each other and their interactions are responsible for the overall performance of the component.
As already explained, the choice of considering as design variables also the material and the production process, has significantly increased the potential of the optimization process, but, so it has done with the complexity and with the time demands of the study.
For what concerns the shape optimization of the components, a generative design software has been used, with its benefits and its limitations, in order to obtain a better understanding of the stress flow inside the component. Its results have been used as general reference for the definition of the final shapes.
In the following chapters, for sake of clarity, the entire optimization process will be presented for each component individually, but first, a synthetic description of the Le Mans Prototypes world and of the disc bell overall functions and characteristics will be provided.
|
