Engineering analysis of an upright wheel assembly for passenger vehicle

In this work, the design and optimisation of an upright assembly for a passenger vehicle were investigated by performing static analysis. Upright assembly is a critical mounting part of a suspension system because it connects all suspension, steering and braking components together to the chassis. Reduction in weight of this component translates to improved performance. The objective of this research was to optimise the upright to reduce the component’s unsprung mass. Solidwork was used to create the model and the static analysis was then performed using the Ansys software, with mild steel as the initial material and the constraints as well as loads were calculated for various scenarios such as braking and cornering maneuvers. The design was optimized by topology optimisation method which considered the areas with low induced stress for material removal. The geometry was then redesigned based on the resulting topology and static analysis was repeated with using different aluminium alloys. The weight of the component was successfully reduced by 50% after the topology optimisation. The use of aluminium, which has a low material density than mild steel, allowed a further weight reduction of 30%. It was also revealed that in comparison to mild steel, the strength was retained with a 15% increase in factor of safety when using aluminium 7075-T6 alloy.