FRONT AND SIDE IMPACT ANALYSIS OF SPACE FRAME CHASSIS OF FORMULA CAR
Keywords:
Formula, Space Frame Chassis, Side Impact, FEM Design and AnalysisAbstract
One of the popular types of formula car chassis is space frame chassis. There are many issues
to design and analyze formula car chassis. For driver, Front and side impact are the main issue for design and
analysis with accurate and safety. In this article, the 2017-2018 formula SAE (the Society of Automotive
Engineers) rules are used for analysis. SolidWorks 2016 are used to construct the CAD models of formula car
chassis. Finite element method (FEM) is used to analyze the CAD models using SolidWorks Simulation. The
results show that all formula car chassis models satisfy the 2017-2018 formula SAE rules. For the front impact,
the maximum stress and the maximum deflection are not significant affected by varying the distance of the
side members. While varying the distance of the front impact members affects both of the maximum stress and
the maximum deflection. For the side impact, the maximum stress and the maximum deflection are not
significant affected by varying the distance of the front members. While varying the distance of the side
members affects both of the maximum stress and the maximum deflection. The criterions of the formula car
chassis design are to make maximum stress lowest and maximum deflection lowest. The distance of the front
members joint and the distance of the side member joint should be as low as possible.