Hull design methodology for cross-country vehicles

摘要

Combat vehicles are subjected to widely varying conditions of use. On the road, they incur stresses with a broad frequency spectrum but low in amplitude, whereas during cross-country driving, large stresses are applied to the hull, causing highamplitude overall movements (pitching, roll, etc.) at low frequency.This paper concerns only the second point. It describes a purely numerical approach used to establish static finite-element computation cases based on definition of reference terrains and vehicle architecture. This allows design offices to proceed todetailed design more rapidly and at lower cost. The method involves a wide variety of tools, such as implicit and explicit finite-element codes and dynamic analysis of articulated systems. It uses a linked sequence of loading cases to solve multilinearsystems of equations.