Análise estrutural e modal de chassi de veículo Baja SAE utilizando o método dos elementos finitos

Abstract

The Baja SAE program is an international engineering competition in which undergraduate students, organized into teams, design and build off-road prototypes to compete against each other. In this context, the program primarily evaluates the safety and performance of the vehicle. One of the key areas for ensuring performance in these parameters is the development of the chassis, which serves as the primary protection system for the driver and provides support for the vehicle's other components.In this context, the main objective of the present study was to validate the new chassis of the Baja Cerrado Team by assessing stresses and displacements under lateral, frontal, and rollover impact scenarios using the finite element method (FEM). Furthermore, a modal analysis of the structure was conducted, also employing the finite element method, to identify potential occurrences of resonance between vibration sources and the chassis.With the aid of the finite element method, it was possible to optimize the chassis so that, in real-life scenarios corresponding to the analyses performed, the roll cage meets the technical requirements specified in the literature, with displacements smaller than the minimum distance to the driver, thereby ensuring the validation of the roll cage. The modal analysis of the optmized structure demonstrated that the first natural frequencies are higher than the Frequency of the vehicle's main excitation source, making resonance scenarios unlikely to occur.