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Analysis of the Structural Behavior of Racing 2012-01-0207

Published
Motorcycle Swingarms 04/16/2012

Giacomo Risitano and Lorenzo Scappaticci

Guglielmo Marconi University

Carlo Grimaldi and Francesco Mariani

Universita degli Studi di Perugia

Copyright © 2012 SAE International

doi:10.4271/2012-01-0207

ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION
The main function of the swingarm of a motorcycle is to
The problems which arise during the design of a motorcycle,
connect the rear wheel with the chassis and also to allow for
may affect the proper functioning of the vehicle, and ride
the space of the rear suspension. There are two main types of
comfort. This type of problem is particularly found in sport
swingarm that have the same function with different
where mechanical components which can cause
structures: a traditional two arms and a single arm. Usually,
malfunctioning should, be replaced quickly within a very
the traditional swingarm is a symmetrical structure. Over the
limited time.
years, the geometry of the arms have undergone numerous
modifications to increase flexural stiffness. Due to these
This work is an investigation of the swingarm component.
developments, the swingarm has lost the geometric
The aim is to link objective data such as stiffness and natural
symmetry.
frequencies (derived through the application of scientific
method) with subjective information such as handling and
Driving along a curve, the asymmetrical swingarm is
comfort perceived by professional riders. The testers were
deformed more easily than a symmetrical swingarm due to
two riders of the 2008 World SuperBike Championship. They
transverse loads. In fact, the wheel torches in the direction of
were chosen to represent two kinds of driving behaviors: one
the curve. This is an undesirable behavior because the radius
of them had a affable riding attitude, whereas, the second was
of the trajectory changs. However, the effect of the wheel
more aggressive.
steering stabilizes the entire “motorcycle system”. It reduces
the frequencies of the weave mode in support of stability.
Three motorcycle swingarms used in the 2008 World
SuperBike Championship, were mechanically characterized:
The flexural and torsional stiffness affects perception tester's.
FEM and experimental investigations were performed. The
In fact, excessive flexibility of the structure causes a phase
characterization of the swingarm concerns, in particular
lag: it is difficult for the driver to maneuver until the end of
torsional stiffness. The swingarm is a component with a semi-
the elastic phase of the maneuver before. Because of low
symmetrical geometry, but it has a very antisymmetric. In
stiffness values, the test pilot feels the motorcycle as being
fact, there are two distinct values of torsional stiffness, one
very heavy. In fact, the same motorcycles with a higher
clockwise and the other counterclockwise. In addition, the
stiffness will have a greater responsiveness and handling. It is
torque does not occur along the axis of symmetry of the
important to note, however, that increasing the stiffness, the
swingarm, but it may deviate from the axis very clearly. The
vibration modes of motorcycles (especially the front wheel
three swingarms analyzed have different antisymmetric
shimmy) are excited with greater violence.
behavior; these differences affect to the choice of which rider
for good handling.
To obtain the correct behavior of the motorcycle and a
satisfactory response to commands, stiffness and load
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Figure 1. (a) test bench swingarms, (b) control sections of generic swingarm.
distribution of the entire “frame-swingarm system” have to be
related and homogeneous. The action of stiffening only a
single element can have partial or no improvement.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The sensations of driving a motorcycle racing are connected
to many factors: the characteristics of individual structural
components cycling, vehicle handling and vibration modes of
the entire “motorcycle system”. In sports, such as the World
Superbike Championship, the teams are very close decision
times. In a short time, the race engineer changes the
characteristics of motorcycle according to the driver's
indications. Rarely this “methodology” leads to optimal
results.
The aim of this paper is to relate the objective data, obtained
through scientific method (testing), with the subjective
indications of the professional tester. In addition, we intend to
quantify the error between objective and subjective data.
In this paper, the mechanical characterization of three
motorcycle swingarms (used in the 2008 Superbike
Championship by Kawasaki Team) was performed. Through
the use of a specially designed test bench, the torsional
rigidity of the swingarm and the symmetric behavior
(clockwise and counterclockwise) were identified.
The three swingarms were different for several factors:
geometry, size and mass. They were bulled with the
acronyms. Due to industrial security policie, information
about the characteristics of the materials and geometries haa
been withheld:
1. S 2008. Aluminum alloy swingarm. The mass is 5265 g.
2. MS 2008. Aluminium alloy swingarm. The mass is 6850
g.
3. BNG 2008. Aluminum alloy swingarm. The mass is 5650
g.
To characterize the swingarms, a test bench (Figure 1a) was
designed and built. It consists of a rigid steel platform. On the
platform, the support swingarm is constrained. The
movements of the control points of the swingarm are
measured through potentiometers. The eight control points
are located on the upper surfaces of the swingarm (Figure
1b). For each pair of control points was created an area of
analysis (blue area AA, BB red area, DC green area; DD
yellow area). Some dynamometers (measured maximum load
4000 N) find the values of the loads applied by a hydraulic
jack. The measuring instruments are interfaced with a
computer by a data acquisition card. The swingarm was
bound at the site of frame's pin with the freedom to rotate.
The rear suspension was replaced with non-deformable rigid
strut fixed to the test bench. The pin-wheel and the wheel hub
was mounted on the swingarm for all tests.
The torque is applied at points where there are holes in the
chain tensioner. The tests were performed on swingarms with
the wheel hub. The experimental test procedure was the same
for each swingarm. Being worth the assumption of small
rotations (low applied loads) is a linear function of the torque
M and the torsion angle Φ. Each swingarm has four different
control sections. These sections control determines the
position of the neutral axis (clockwise and counterclockwise).
The neutral axis is the line joining the points of control
sections in which the rotation is zero.
Defined the test protocol, swingarm “test” was made of steel
Fe 360 with 80×40 mm box structure. The swingarm “test” is
perfectly symmetrical. It does the same in both configurations
of the load (torque clockwise and counterclockwise), as
shown in Figure 2.a. A CAD model was created for each
swingarm and swingarm text (example figure 9d). From CAD
model, a FE model was made. The finite element analysis
were performed using the software ANSYS ® Workbanch, an
extension of ANSYS ®. The mesh was created using a
structural element tetrahedron 10 nodes (SOLID 187) of
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Figure 2. Performance of torque and angle for clockwise (dash) and counterclockwise (line) rotations of the “swingarm test”.

Figure 3. Graphical representation of the neutral axis (torque clockwise - color points and torque counterclockwise -color line)
and geometry axis (black dash) for the “swingarm test”.

ANSYS ®. Quality control for the mesh were used to refine
curvature. The boundary and load conditions were the same
of the experimental test. The experimental results were
validated with FEM analysis and the average percentage error
is less than 4% (Table 1). The methodology was validated.
The swingarm is symmetrical (Figure 2), it responds similarly
to rotate clockwise and counterclockwise. The authors
identified geometry axis and neutral axis. The geometry axis
is comparable with symmetry axis of swingarm and its points
have the same distance from the two arms. Contrariwise, the
points of neutral axis are the points where the rotation is zero.
In addition, for “test” swingarm the neutral axis nearly
coincides with the geometry axis (Figure 3) for clockwise and
counterclockwise torsion.
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Table 1. Percentage error of the values of the displacement of the “swingarm test” between experimental tests and FEM
analysis

Figure 4. Performance of torque and angle for clockwise (dash) and counterclockwise (line) rotations of the S 2008.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To give an example and the sake of brevity, only the results
of the swingarm S 2008 are described in detail. The test
protocol is the same as the one validated with the “swingarm
test”. The control sections are shown in Figure 1b. Analyzing
the results of the 2008 S, we see an almost similar behavior in
the case of clockwise and counterclockwise torque (Figure 4).
The difference between the clockwise and counterclockwise
torsional stiffness is slight (10% approximately). Although
this is not an insignificant percentage difference, the behavior
is essentially symmetrical. Looking at the neutral axis (Figure
5), there is a better response to clockwise rotation; in fact, the
neutral axis almost coincides with the geometry axis of
symmetry (black dash). Only one section has an offset of 20
mm (the other sections have differences around 10 mm). In
the case of counterclockwise torque, the differences are more
accentuated (50 mm).
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Figure 5. Graphical representation of the neutral axis (torque clockwise - color points and torque counterclockwise -color line)
and geometry axis (black dash) for the S 2008.

Figure 6. Performance of torque and angle for counterclockwise rotations of the the three swingarms.

All swingarms were subjected to the same test protocol. The different for the SM 2008 (15%). The BNG 2008 swingarm
graphs in figure 6 and 7 show that S 2008 has the lowest has a more symmetrical behavior compared to SM 2008.
value of torsional stiffness. Instead, the highest value is BNG
2008. By analyzing the differences between the values of k
clockwise and counterclockwise (figure 8), equal values are
observed for the BNG 2008 (0.80%) and substantially
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Figure 7. Performance of torque and angle for clockwise rotations of the the three swingarms.

Figure 8. Percentage difference between the torsional stiffness counterclockwise - clockwise.

In addition to experimental tests, a series of finite element laser scanning technology with TOF (Figures 9a and 9b). The
analysis were performed. To give an example and the sake of comparison of masses between real and virtual components
brevity, the case of S 2008 is reported. The swingarm (S (Table 2) is less than 5%.
2008) is mounted on the Kawasaki ZX-10R Ninja (World
Superbike Championship 2008). The swingarm is an
assembly of seven components made of aluminum alloy by
TIG welding. The geometries of the various components of
the S 2008 unsoldered were acquired using three-dimensional
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Figure 9. (a) components of S 2008 and (b) reproduction in CAD. (c) S 2008 and (d) reproduction in CAD.
Table 2. Percentage error of the mass for real
components and CAD model (S 2008).
Subsequently, various parties have been coupled with a focus
on welded joints. The masses of the real and virtual swingarm
S 2008 were compared to assess the phase of reverse
engineering. The error is around 7% and the CAD model is
fully tested (Figures 9c and 9d). The finite element analysis
were performed using the software ANSYS ® Workbanch, an
extension of ANSYS ®. The mesh was created using a
structural element tetrahedron 10 nodes (SOLID 187) of
ANSYS ®. Quality control for the mesh were used to refine
curvature. The model consists of 137.458 elements and
280.881 nodes. The validation of the FE model of the
swingarm was carried out with the experimental test that had
a high degree of difficulty in terms of numerical computation.
We identified four control points (Figure 10).
Figure 10. Control points of the swingarm S 2008 for the
validation of the FE model.
For each test the repeatability of the data was verified. The
experimental tests were simulated on the FE model
accurately. After the mesh, special care was taken to correct
insert the boundary conditions and load. Through numerical
analysis, shifts of the control points of the FE model were
evaluated. The average error is under 10% (8.42%). The
comparison between real and simulated shifts are shown in
Figure 11. The FE model is validated and extended to other
loading conditions with a satisfactory confidence range.
The authors have conducted experimental tests to determine
the vibration modes of the swingarms. They have also
calculated a correlation between the results of experimental
tests and FE model. For the tests an instrumented hammer
and piezoelectric accelerometers were adopted as tools. The
acquisition was managed by a unit Prosig ® P8012. A
program in MATLAB ®, specially created by writers, rebuilt
the vibration modes of the swingarm [1]. For the FEM
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Figure 11. Differences of the shifts of control points between experimental tests and FE model.

Table 3. Comparison and error percentages between the frequencies of the swingarm S 2008 detected during the experimental
tests and finite element analysis.

analysis has used the model described above. The
experimental tests and FEM simulations were carried out
with zero boundary conditions. For the sake of brevity, we
report only the results for the S 2008. The frequencies of the
system (and its errors) are reported in Table 3. In particular,
the values of frequencies obtained by finite element analysis
(x-axis) and those obtained by experiment (y-axis) are shown
in Figure 12. The errors have an average of 8% with a
maximum of 10%.
CONCLUSIONS
The driving experience for a professional tester of
motorcycles is strongly linked to the stiffness of the
individual components, the handling of the vehicle and the
vibration modes of the “motorcycle system”. The aim of this
paper was to relate the data obtained through objective
scientific methodology (stiffness, natural frequencies) with
the subjective indications of professional tester (handling,
maneuverability, comfort).
The authors focused their attention on the effects determined
by the swingarm. The mechanical characterization of three
distinct motorcycle swingarms (used in the Superbike
Championship 2008 by Team Kawasaki) were performed.
The characterization was designed especially for determining
the torsional stiffness of the components, the symmetries and
similarities in behavior between clockwise and
counterclockwise stress. For this reason, the “neutral axis” of
the swingarms were identified.
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Figure 12. Differences of the frequencies of S 2008 between experimental tests and FE model.

At the same stiffness of the chassis and tires, as regards the REFERENCES
swingarm, the testers' choice is directed towards the stiffness
characteristics. The torsional stiffness interpret better driving 1. Risitano, G., Garinei, A., Scappaticci, L.; “Analisi modale
sensations felt by the drivers. The increased stiffness of the sperimentale di un forcellone motociclistico da
BNG 2008 adheres more to the feelings encountered by the competizione”; XXXVII Congresso nazionale AIAS 2008,
two testers on the track. By analyzing the telemetry data of Roma, 10-13 settembre 2008. (in ITA).
the track in Misano Adriatico, the chattering phenomenon did
not occur to the advantage of handling. The coincidence of CONTACT INFORMATION
the neutral axis with the geometry axis of symmetry of the
Giacomo Risitano
swingarm does not mean better handling: the symmetry of
g.risitano@unimarconi.it
behavior does not seem to coincide with the indications of the
driver/tester.

In addition, the numerical analysis gave a confirmation to the

experimental method of investigation. In fact, as is the case of
S 2008 swingarm, it can be argued that the finite element
simulations can help the researcher in the characterization of
components.

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