The gross weight of a vehicle (GVW) directly affects mobility. Over time, weight increases can occur due to how the vehicle is operated, legislation changes, vehicle modifications and add-ons, resulting in unintended consequences for fleet owners and operators such as:
- Slower, less mobile vehicles.
- Reduced component life due to overloading.
- Increased maintenance costs.
- Increased fuel consumption.
Reducing GVW improves vehicle performance
Our weight reduction process includes:
- Defining a representative vehicle duty cycle and appropriate design criteria. Best results can be achieved by instrumenting a vehicle.
- Developing the overall concept design using our proven concept development processes.
- Calculating the expected results from first principles.
- Completing a “first cut” FEA of the components. Our engineers critically assess boundary conditions, mesh size and load inputs.
- Verifying FEA setup against the first principle results. An essential early step.
- Refining and finalizing the design based on the FEA results in accordance with the agreed design criteria. This is an iterative process.
- Building the prototype product from our Technical Data Package (TDP).
- Completing physical tests, including torque, fatigue and structural tests. Parts can be strain gauged to correlate actual results with FEA results.
- Revising and refining the TDP based on test results.
- Field testing. Again, parts can be strain gauged to correlate actual results with FEA results.
How it helps
On a recent project, we achieved an overall saving greater than 400kg across the full vehicle driveline. Importantly, we also maintained interfaces and exterior envelopes so new components could be retrofitted without changes to vehicle structure.
Need a quick solution to solve vehicle mobility problems?
There is no fixed timescale for this type of work. Our agile processes and flexible approach allow us to provide solutions to meet your requirements.
Keen to learn more? We’re always happy to chat, get in touch with one of the team here.
