Structural Analysis of an Articulated Urban Bus Chassis via FEM: a Methodology Applied to a Case Study

This paper deals with the static structural analysis of an articulated urban bus chassis, carried out with the Finite Elements Method. The purpose of this work is to simulate and forecast the structural response of the chassis, in terms of stress, strain and displacement, under several loading and constraining conditions, which aim at reflecting the actual duty cycle of the bus. A thorough interaction with the customer company allowed the authors to define adequately the loading scheme and to constrain the structure properly. Sensitivity analyses about FEM parameters have been run, in order to achieve an adequate trade off between computational time and results accuracy. Obtained results have been double checked by employing both solid (3D) and shell (2D) elements for each simulation. Eventually, the customer has been notified of critical issues and the related suggested improvements.