RESEARCH ARTICLE


Analysis and Optimization of the Double-Axle Steering Mechanism with Dynamic Loads



Gang Qin, Ying Sun, Yunqing Zhang*, Liping Chen
Center for Computer-Aided Design, School of Mechanical Science & Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2012
Volume: 6
Issue: Suppl 1-M2
First Page: 26
Last Page: 39
Publisher Id: TOMEJ-6-26
DOI: 10.2174/1874155X01206010026

Article History:

Received Date: 04/10/2011
Revision Received Date: 29/11/2011
Acceptance Date: 15/12/2011
Electronic publication date: 22/3/2012
Collection year: 2012

© 2012 Qin et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Center for Computer-Aided Design, School of Mechanical Science & Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China; Tel/Fax: +86-27-87547405; E-mail: zhangyq@hust.edu.cn


Abstract

A hierarchical optimization procedure for the optimal synthesis of a double-axle steering mechanism used in truck with dynamic loads is presented. A multibody model of double-axle steering mechanism is presented to characterize the leaf spring effect. The influences of dynamic loads, the motion interference of steering linkage resulted from the elastic deformation of leaf spring, and the effects of wheel slip angles and the position discrepancies of wheel speed rotation centers are studied systematically. A hierarchical optimization method based on target cascading methodology is proposed to classify the design variables of double-axle steering mechanism into four levels. A double-axle steering mechanism for a heavy-duty truck is utilized to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. The simulation results indicate that the hierarchical optimization procedure is effective and robust. And as a result, it will surely be widely used in engineering.

Keywords: Hierarchical optimization, double-axle steering mechanism, target cascading methodology, multibody dynamics.