JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH IN

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
OPTIMIZATION OF TORSIONAL STIFFNESS OF A
EICHER 11.10 CHESIS USING EVOLUTIONARY
METHODS WITH A HETEROGENEOUS GENOTYPE
REPRESENTATION
1
M. R. GALOLIA,
2
PROF. M. J. PATHAK
1
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mukeshgalolia@yahoo.om
A!"TRA#T $ Automotive chassis is an important part of an automobile. The chassis serves as an frame work
for supporting the body and different parts of the automobile. Also, it should be rigid enough to withstand the
shock, twist, vibration and other stresses. We present an optimization approach for %I#H%R 11.1& #hesis a
frame based on evolutionary methods. The optimization objective is to minimize the mass of the frame subject to
a given torsional stiffness and a strength constraint occurring during braking of the vehicle. Further we take
into account different constraints on available sizes, what leads to continuous, discrete or even mied
optimization variables. The !uego prototype chassis was tested to determine the value of its global optimized
torsional stiffness. This value was calculated to be "##$%m&deg. This value was to be improved upon by using
'reation of a Finite element baseline validation model, (iscussed modification of this model, A design
improvement study and An optimization study
1. INTRODUCTION
For the race-track performance of a vehicle the main
frame, connecting the front wheels via front fork and
steering shaft with the swing arm, is one of the most
crucial parts. Today as in the last decade, there were
two successfully applied concepts for such frames.
One is an aluminum-box frame, typically applied in
Japanese cars. The other one, mainly used by the
talian builder !ucati, is a steel trellis frame. "oth
concepts showed to perform at an e#ual level during
the last decade of vehicle. n this work we will focus
on the optimi$ation of a tubular steel trellis frame.
Therefore, as a starting point, we use a chesis of the
EICHER 11.10, that has been continously improved
and already rigid enough during the last decade. To
optimi$e such a frame, one has first to be aware of
what the design ob%ectives. &onsidering only drive
application, as we do within this work, weight is
always a central issue. Further the stiffness of the
frame between the steering shaft and the swing arm is
a crucial parameter. "ut it is not maximum stiffness
that designers want to achieve' in fact they want to
have a certain compliance. This compliance depends
on various parameters such as the geometry of the car
or the power deconvolution of the engine. For our
work, we will not discuss this parameter further, we
%ust assume that a certain stiffness(flexibility has to
be achieved. )xperience shows that this stiffness
values are so high, that maximum stresses induced by
a torsional load case are far below critical values. *
second relevant load case is braking. &onsidering
sport or race bikes, principally the front brake
produces the whole deceleration. Therefore via front
fork and steering shaft a momentum and a
compressive force are introduced into the chassis. For
this load case not stiffness but strength is crucial.
0. TORTIONAL STIFFNESS OF A
CHESIS
The torsional stiffness of a vehicle+s chassis
significantly affects its handling characteristics and
is therefore an important parameter to measure. n
this work a new twist fixture apparatus designed to
measure the torsional stiffness of a ,inston &up
series race car chassis is described. The twist fixture
is relatively light weight,ad%ustable, and easily
transportable by one person for #uick set-up on
different chassis. -easured values of torsional
stiffness are reported for several different chassis.
The fixture applies vertical displacements .using
linear, %ack-screw actuators/ at the front spring
perches of the chassis while holding the rear perches
fixed. &onventional race car scales located under the
front assembly measure the resulting reaction forces
due to the displacements.
!ial indicators are placed at selected locations along
the chassis to measure deflections. 0sing the dial
indicator readings, the measured reaction forces and
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MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
the chassis geometry, the torsional stiffness of the
chassis can be calculated.
=. TORSIONAL LOAD >OR TWISTING
MOMENT?
t is caused due to vertical load when the ,ehicle
comes across a road bump. The twisting induces a
shear stress in frame. The frame is designed strong
enough to resist torsion by proving
Tor#ue-resisting members
&ross-members
* radius rod
@. 2ASIC IDEAS OF EVOLUTIONARY
ALGORITHMS IN STRUCTURAL
OPTIMIZATION
)volutionary *lgorithms use an analogy with natural
evolution to perform search by evolving solutions to
problems, usually working with large collection of
solutions at a time. The common underlying idea
behind the techni#ues is to have a given population of
individuals .solutions/' the environmental pressure
causes natural selection and hereby the fitness of the
population is growing. From the point of view of
classical optimi$ation, )*s represent a powerful
stochastic $eroth order method and can find the
global optimum of very rough functions. n 1tructural
Optimi$ation, )*s are used in many different forms.
&ommonly they are divided into four categories
2owever, they are all based on similar evolutionary
principles. Therefore we will use amore modern
terminology also used by and we generally speak
%ust of )volutionary *lgorithms. *ll

F(* 1. 2#3(c 3c'e$e +& #% E,+)t(+%#!- A)*+!(t'$
the above listed strategies can be seen as
speciali$ations of general )*s which we will
describe below. )*s use two separate spaces3 the
search space and the solution space. The search space
is a space of coded solutions .genotype/ to the
problem. The solution space is the space of actual
solutions .phenotype/. )*s maintain a population of
) 4 individuals. )ach individual consists of a
genotype and a corresponding phenotype. * simple
)* works as outlined in Figure 5. * population of a
given number of individuals is initiali$ed randomly.
The fitness of the whole population is evaluated
*+valuation,. * fitness value can be assigned to every
individual by applying the ob%ective function as an
abstract fitness measure. The fitness from the
evaluation is then used to determine how many
copies of each individual are placed into a temporary
area often termed the mating pool. For reproduction
parents are picked from the mating pool by giving
some preference to individuals with better fitness
values *-election,. Offspring are generated by the use
of the crossover operator, which randomly allocates
genes from each parent+s genotype to each
offspring+s genotype. -utation is then occasionally
applied to the offspring. * new population is built by
deterministic or stochastic choice of parents and
offspring ..eplacement/. Then the new individuals of
the population are evaluated. The entire process of
evaluation, reproduction and replacement continues
until a given termination criterion is reached. This
can for example be triggered by with the values of a
time or generation counter or the best fitness of the
population.
6. PROGRAMMING TOOLS
,ithin our work, we use different &66 software
libraries freely available under a public license as
open source. The evolutionary strategies in this work
are implemented using the )O .)volving Ob%ects/
library 7 . Fitness evaluations are accomplished using
the F)8y9 .Finite )lement 8ibrary e9periment/
library 5 developed at our chair. )verything was done
under 8inux(0nix operating systems and compiled
with :40 gcc compilers ; . *s pre- and
postprocessor for the Finite )lement model of the
frame, we used the commercial Finite )lement
software *41<1= . #." +/ 0 The +volvable /bjects
!ibrary
)O - the )volvable Ob%ects library allows to evolve
any data structure .ob%ect/ that provides the necessary
operators for the according evolutionary
programming paradigm. "asically )O %ust provides
the building blocks to perform any kind of
evolutionary strategy within the field of evolutionary
computing. 4evertheless common paradigms like
:enetic *lgorithms, )volutionary 1trategies,
)volutionary >rogramming, or :enetic >rogramming
are already implemented in the actual release of )O.
The design improvement study performed resulted in
a optimum torsional stiffness of ?==@4m(deg, an
increase of ;AAB over the baseline model. *
maximum increase in efficiency of 5@?B to
5;g(4m(deg for a mass of 7=@.;Cg accompanied this
increase in torsional stiffness resulting optimi$ing
parameter.
-aterial of the D&E channel is taken as 3 1t F5
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JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH IN
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
The test procedure is the same as that used with the
chassis except the maximum twist value is much
larger.
The standard is twisted in increments of GH.7HHE up
to a maximum value of G7.HHHE measured with the
front dial indicators placed ;5E apart."ased on beam
theory to predict the deflection of the s#uare beams,
simple torsion for the circular tube, and with ball
%oints .free rotations/ at each end of the standard, the
vertical reactions at the front are e#ual and opposite
with magnitude, where
*$ I Jight-front reaction force
"$ I 8eft-front reaction force
: I -odulus of rigidity of steel
J I 1econd polar moment of area of circular tube
d I Twist fixture %ack-screw displacement
l I 8ongitudinal distance between front and rear
supports
d I 8ateral distance between left and right supports
) I -odulus of elasticity of steel
I 1econd moment of area of s#uare sections
From the applied twist angle
# I 5d(d, the torsional stiffness predicted by the
analysis is,
F(*!e 0 A M(..)e F!#$e
8. ASSEM2LY
Just as we can combine features into parts, we can
also combine parts into assemblies. *ssembly mode
in >ro()4:4))J enables we to place component
parts and sub assemblies together to form assemblies, as
well as to design parts based on how they should fit
together. ,e can then modify, analy$e, or reorient
the resulting assemblies.
F(*!e = A A33e$1)- +& C'#33(3 e)e$e%t3
*t present time the problem of enhancing optimi$ed
stiffness is very actual for the world automotive
industry and chassis is the backbone of the
automotive system. !ay by day modification has
been done in existing system to increase strength and
durability with minimum possible cost. 2ere is the
one approach presented.
This work presents to study the optimi$ed stiffness of
automobile chassis. ,hen different parts are mounted
o n it at that time no. of stresses are produce in
chassis. First !esign stress is calculated then it was
compare with the stress result of Finite element
*nalysis report by using pro--echanica tool. Then
the model is then optimi$ed for said parameter.
5. CONCLUSION
,e introduced an universal genotype for
optimi$ation of heterogeneous parameter lists and
applied it successfully to different optimi$ation
problem formulations in context of a &2*111 OF
)&2)J 77.7H. Further we used normali$ed function
formulation for the different terms contributing to the
fitness function. This made it #uite easy and
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JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH IN
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
understandable to find ade#uate coefficients for the
different terms of the fitness function. 1urprisingly,
this frame design, intensively developed during one
decade, still shows #uite some potential for
improvement. ,e could reduce the weight by 5H.@B
while preserving the originally desired mechanical
properties. This also demonstrates the potential of
using this optimi$ation not only for weight reduction,
but to easily reali$e specific mechanical properties of
a structure in a very efficient way.
9. REFERENCES
K7L Former Ford *nd &hrysler &hief )ngineer
0nveils 4ew ,ay To !esign Mehicles *t 1ae ,orld
&ongress
K5L >. 2a%ela, 1tochastic 1earch n 1tructural
Optimi$ation3 :enetic *lgorithms *nd 1imulated
*nnealing, n3 1tructural Optimi$ation3 1tatus *nd
>romise, Mol. 7FH, >rogress n *stronautics *nd
*eronautics, 7NN5, >p. ?77O?;A.
K;L 8. Fogel, *. Owens, -. ,alsh, *rtificial
ntelligence Through 1imulated )volution, John
,iley, 4ew <ork, 7N??.
K=L !. :oldberg, :enetic *lgorithms n 1earch,
Optimi$ation *nd -achine 8earning, *ddison-
,esley >ublishing &ompany, nc., Jeading,
-assachusetts, 7N@N.
KFL >. 1oni, D)ffects Of &hassis Flexibility On
Joll 1tiffness Of * ,inston &up 1tock &ar 0sing
The Finite )lement -ethodE,-asters Thesis,
!epartment Of -echanical )ngineering, &lemson
0niversity, -ay 7NN@.
K?L *nalysis Of Torsional 1tiffness *nd !esign
mprovement 1tudy Of * Cit &ar &hassis >rototype,
"y ,esley 8inton, -.1c. Thesis, &ranfield
4iversity,1chool Of ndustrial *nd -anufacturing
1cience -otorsport )ngineering *nd -anagement
5HH7-5
KAL *utomotive &hassis-"rake, 1uspension,
1teering O "y 8ane )ichhen.

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