Bum Suk Kim
The Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, vol. 23, no. 4, pp.960-963, 2009

Abstract : In the design process of an automobile part, several analysis methods are usually used to evaluate the performance of the part. However, most automobile design engineers do not directly use CAE ( computer aided engineering) tools since specific skills are required to obtain practical results. Moreover, CAE requires a huge amount of computation time and cost. To resolve these problems, a new design approach, termed first order analysis (FOA), has been proposed. In this paper, the FOA technique is employed to design a vehicle sub-frame. An equivalent model of the vehicle subframe which only consists of beam elements is proposed and the modal properties obtained with the model are compared to those obtained with a full scale finite element model. The effects of some parameter variations on the modal characteristics of the vehicle sub-frame are investigated by employing the FOA equivalent model.

Keyword : FOA equivalent model; Variation analysis; Vehicle sub-frame; Vibration characteristics