{"id":74796,"date":"2020-10-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/?p=7300"},"modified":"2020-10-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T00:00:00","slug":"digital-debunking-muscle-car-mods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/digital-debunking-muscle-car-mods\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Debunking: Muscle Car Mods"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we enter fall and get ready for winter, many of us gearheads who have been socially distancing behind the wheel of a classic or performance car will have to start socially distancing in the garage instead. One popular accessory for our performance-oriented pursuits is frame\/chassis bracing. Adding a brace to your vehicle is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive modification project, and they come in many forms such as strut tower braces and subframe braces (they’re also definitely cheaper than orthodontic braces!). The idea is that the stiffer the chassis, the more control you have over the tuning of the suspension. Additionally, with a stiffer chassis, you could theoretically expect to better handle higher loads from bigger, stickier tires. If you are trying to launch off the line or clip the apex of a corner, a stiffer chassis is a good thing. In this post we will quantify the real value of a few different braces on a virtual pony car. Are they just bling or are they functional?<\/p>\n

Three different types of braces were evaluated:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Cowl\/shock tower bracing (Red):<\/strong> Meant to triangulate subframe to main body<\/li>\n
  2. Subframe connector bracing (Blue):<\/strong> Connects front subframe to rear frame essentially creating a full frame<\/li>\n
  3. Frame lateral connector (Green):<\/strong> Meant to improve reaction to cornering loads. Included as a control to compare sensitivity<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \"\" Cowl and subframe connector bracing<\/div>\n

    Creating the Geometry<\/h3>\n

    While learning to use the geometry tools within Altair InspireTM<\/sup><\/a>, specifically Polynurbs, it seemed like a great way to model the swoopy shapes of a muscle car’s exterior without a lot of the burden of typical parametric CAD surfacing. Inspire is made for defeaturing existing CAD to prep for optimization, create early geometry for concept analysis, and to generate solid geometry from optimization outputs. In this case, we don’t want or need Class A surfaces for tooling, just a representative shape that’s close enough to make A-to-B comparisons on design concepts. Once the basic surfaces were generated, the logical next step was to run some analysis to see what effect the braces would have on the chassis stiffness.