Vehicle-level Lightweight Engineering

Principal Investigators
Imtiaz-ul Haqu, Mica Grujicic (Clemson U.)

Industry
Andreas Obieglo (BMW Research and Technology)

Government
Rahul Gupta (Army Research Lab., Aberdeen Proving Ground)

Student
Hamidreza Marvi (Clemson U.)

Military systems, especially those supporting ground forces, are being transformed to become faster, more agile, and more mobile and must be quickly moved to operations located throughout the world. As a result, there is an increased demand for improved lightweight vehicle armor and structures. As new armor systems are introduced, their effect on the entire performance of the vehicle should be investigated to identify the challenges and trade-offs.

For a prototypical military vehicle, a set of computer models will be developed and integrated into a powerful computer-aided engineering toolbox and used to address the impact of the introduction of lightweight materials and technologies on the following aspects of vehicle performance: mobility/road performance, blast resistance/survivability, crew/equipment protection, manufacturability, reliability and durability, and serviceability.

The main benefits to the US Army and industry will be the availability of a comprehensive computational toolbox which can be used to assess complicated trade-offs resulting from the use of lightweight materials and technologies in vehicles. The toolbox will be based on the commercial software packages widely used by the US Army and industry.