Design and Structural Analysis of a Front Single-Sided Swingarm for an Electric Three-Wheel Motorcycle
School of Production Engineering & Management, Technical University of Crete, 73100 Chania, Greece
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(17), 6063; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10176063
Received: 31 July 2020 / Revised: 19 August 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020 / Published: 1 September 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Finite Element Modeling for Mechanical and Mechatronic Systems)
This study focuses on the structural analysis of the front single-sided swingarm of a new three-wheel electric motorcycle, recently designed to meet the challenges of the vehicle electrification era. The primary target is to develop a swingarm capable of withstanding the forces applied during motorcycle’s operation and, at the same time, to be as lightweight as possible. Different scenarios of force loadings are considered and emphasis is given to braking forces in emergency braking conditions where higher loads are applied to the front wheels of the vehicle. A dedicated Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software is used for the structural evaluation of different swingarm designs, through a series of finite element analysis simulations. A topology optimization procedure is also implemented to assist the redesign effort and reduce the weight of the final design. Simulation results in the worst-case loading conditions, indicate strongly that the proposed structure is effective and promising for actual prototyping. A direct comparison of results for the initial and final swingarm design revealed that a 23.2% weight reduction was achieved.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
swingarm; single-sided; Finite Elements Analysis (FEA); three-wheel motorcycle; topology optimization
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Spanoudakis, P.; Christenas, E.; Tsourveloudis, N.C. Design and Structural Analysis of a Front Single-Sided Swingarm for an Electric Three-Wheel Motorcycle. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 6063. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10176063
AMA Style
Spanoudakis P, Christenas E, Tsourveloudis NC. Design and Structural Analysis of a Front Single-Sided Swingarm for an Electric Three-Wheel Motorcycle. Applied Sciences. 2020; 10(17):6063. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10176063
Chicago/Turabian StyleSpanoudakis, Polychronis; Christenas, Evangelos; Tsourveloudis, Nikolaos C. 2020. "Design and Structural Analysis of a Front Single-Sided Swingarm for an Electric Three-Wheel Motorcycle" Appl. Sci. 10, no. 17: 6063. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10176063
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit