Abstract
Individual mobility has been changing through the last decade; in seek of sustainable solutions involving ambient, energetic and social factors. This seeking led to the invention of the electric moped and kick scooter that has been changing the way people move in big cities. The evolution on these equipment’s a work in progress that, more and more uses different materials and technologies. Additive Manufacture (AM) has been through a quick evolution in the last decades. This layer-by-layer technology enables the materialization of unique designs that wouldn’t be possible with common manufacture technologies. To maximize the use of AM potential, designers should rethink the conceptual generation, considering its design features.
The present work aims to contribute by develo** a structural element to be assembled on an electric scooter to reduce mass and energy consumption during daily life use. The process of conceptual design starts from an existent steel frame design of an electric scooter, and further definition of constrains and limitation in the volume of the electric motorcycle frame. Considering the two most severe conditions as braking and acceleration was developed a generative design of frame considering the optimization process to reduce the mass and volume of frame. We selected a morphing of two conditions for the final design frame. After a finite element model was considered to evaluate the frame performance considering four polymeric materials. An ABS polymer material was assumed for additive manufacturing for a 1:2 scale prototype with different lattice infills. The experiments of frame stiffness present the importance of lattice mesh structure to improve frame behavior. The results show the potential application of Additive manufacturing in production of structural frame of electric motorbike in a polymeric material. Additive Manufacture with ABS presents a potential solution to reduce the mass of the frame and improve the design.
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Domingues, P., Relvas, C., Ramos, A. (2023). Electric Motorcycle Frame Design with Generative Design Feature for Polymer Additive Manufacturing – Concept and Prototype Validation. In: Correia Vasco, J.O., et al. Progress in Digital and Physical Manufacturing. ProDPM 2021. Springer Tracts in Additive Manufacturing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33890-8_40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33890-8_40
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