The New Twist Beam Axle Design for a Passenger Vehicle

In this paper, the design and analysis of a new rear twist beam axle in the concept design phase are reported. The new axle was designed with the purpose of improving the vehicle dynamics performance, improving load carrying capacity, reducing weight and cost. In order to switch from trailing arm rear axle with torsion bars to the new twist beam axle, many packaging issues had to be addressed, the most important of which was to keep the existing fuel tank with minimum or no modifications to the underbody panels. In addition to presenting the design approach, the results of an ADAMS kinematics and elastokinematics analysis and NASTRAN stress analysis are presented.