Análise computacional e experimental da rigidez torcional de uma estrutura tubular metálica

Abstract

Torsional stiffness can be considered the most important property of a chassis, in front of that, teams of automotive competitions of the State University of Maranhão need to constantly evaluate this greatness, but the lack of resources most of the time becomes an impediment to this. Finite element analyzes are often used because they are the cheapest and most practical method, however, validation of this method is indispensable, as several authors say. That said, this work presents a validation by means of a simple and low cost experimental test, validating not only the computational analyzes, but also all the process of fabrication of the prototype and execution of the experiment. After the literature review, computational analyzes were performed for the prototype, presenting the procedures and boundary conditions of the simulations in a detailed way, it is worth mentioning that the other components needed to perform the experiment received the same attention. Then, the entire manufacturing process of the components, the resources used and the care taken for good reliability were presented. Finally, the experiment was performed and the results were evaluated, obtaining a relative error of 8,24% between the computational and the experimental results, reaching the conclusion that both methods provide a good estimate of the torsional stiffness of the projected structure