Bell Crank Lever

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

Name: Ankush Sharma
School: ABES Engineering College
3D printing machine and method: EOS M 290 - Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)
Initial weight of the component = 453 gm
Final weight of the component = 158 gm
Total mass reduction = 65%

In a racing vehicle, every gram accounts for performance and thus optimization of each and every part is important in order to unleash more power on the track.
This project highlights the optimum design of a bell crank lever to be used in a Formula student vehicle by utilizing the capabilities of Topology optimization and additive manufacturing to lower down the weight of the component and not compromising on the strength of the part.
Our main objective is to lower down the weight of a bell crank lever used for transmitting the forces form the pushrod to the shock absorbers.
I started with pen and paper and noted down all the constraints and forces that the part will experience. I used PTC Creo parametric to model the existing bell crank lever used in the previous vehicle. The next step was to simulate the lever and find out exactly from where the material could be removed, for this purpose ANSYS Workbench was used. The results from the simulation suggested that a lot of excess material can be removed which does not contribute to the load-bearing capacity. Topology optimization was then carried out with DfAM in Altair Inspire using maximum stiffness criteria and an optimum shape was extracted from the simulation. After CAD regeneration I simulated the Bell crank in ANSYS again in order to validate the design. The overall mass has been reduced by 65% and the component can bear the maximum stresses it will experience.
SLS 3d printing technology is to be used for the manufacturing of this component. The prefered orientation and support structures were generated in Autodesk Netfabb with the help of EOS M 290 additive manufacturing machine workspace.

Refer to the Documentation for detailed description of design process.

Included in the download: renderings, full design documentation with simulations, STL file of the part with and without support, STEP file of the part and some development images.