An integrated method and tool for telescopic beams design in extendable undercarriages

Earth-moving machine builders require innovative design methods and tool to optimize structural performance while reducing production and design costs, particularly in crucial phases like undercarriage frame design and structural verification. After an in-depth description of the design flow normally followed in industry, the paper presents a computationally efficient method and tool to aid designers in dimensioning extendable tracked undercarriages, aiming to drastically reduce design time and efforts to optimize resources. The proposed tool is based on an analytical model established from in-depth analyses of the undercarriage Computer Aided Design (CAD) assembly and the expertise of the industrial partner. To address the 3D structural problem, a planar system is employed with proper corrective coefficients. These coefficients are meticulously evaluated through direct comparison with Finite Element Method (FEM) models by seamlessly integrating SolidWorks and ANSYS Workbench. The tool accepts as inputs geometric and material data, as well as specific user-defined load scenarios, providing outputs in the form of the deflected configuration of the undercarriage and stress levels. Direct comparison with the results obtained from FEM for three industrial undercarriage models demonstrates the validity of the approach, with errors consistently within the 10% range in almost all cases. This enables designers with no advanced skills in FEM to efficiently validate diverse design variants with minimal effort. Once validated, the tool is integrated with an optimizer in Matlab to conduct computationally efficient design optimization studies. The optimization problem, focused on minimizing the beam's vertical size while maintaining structural integrity and limiting deflections, has been successfully resolved within a limited computational time, showcasing the benefits of the proposed approach for undercarriage design.