Advanced Lightweight Vehicle Components and Materials

The HMMWV vehicle has seen increasing weight due to the added anti-ballistic and anti-IED protection, whereas mainframe is not designed to function optimally. Ground mobility forces are conducting increased mounted operations from armored HMMWV/modified HMMWV’s. As additional armor and equipment continues to be added to the system, the performance of the existing power train/suspension/steering/chassis components are not sufficient. This causes multiple vehicle issues ranging from high stress and wear to instability and undesirable center of masses. One solution is to decrease the mass in the chassis. AlphaSTAR proposes is to employ advanced and proven finite element/program management techniques to identify chassis weight decrease opportunities and optimize the design using light weight, high-strength composite materials. AlphaSTAR will use a parametric approach to identify and define the ranking of component severity. A Value Analysis/Value Engineering (VAVE) workshop will be utilized to incorporate non-engineering design constraints as well as supplier parameters. Structural design/analysis of the composite chassis components will use AlphaSTAR’s GENOA progressive-failure-analysis and life-prediction software to develop the lightest designs. This approach will consider overall weight reduction, component and material cost, component complexity, strength, component life, and the overall practicality of decreasing HMMWV chassis weight with little or no loss in performance/durability/reliability.