An Easy Methodology for Designing Powertrain Bottom Protection in Composite Material of a Rally Car

In racing application, it is particularly difficult to design some vehicle components because of the uncertainty of the boundary conditions. In the present paper the design of a powertrain bottom protection of a rally car is considered and it is used as an example for developing a design methodology for complex boundary condition problems. The uncertainty of boundary conditions is due to the difficult of measuring or estimating the load magnitude and its application point. So engineers design the component on the basis of the experience or many experimental tests. This approach is dangerous because the load history is not wide and usually difficult to be extended to every case. It becomes important for designer to have an indication that suggests them the way they have to follow. In the present paper two main goals are pursued:

• providing designers with a methodology that could assimilate the impact condition to a well known and easy-to-study static case in order to have indications about component performance and its possible damage;
• developing an easy instrument for designing the composite material the protection is made of.

A result of the paper is a quick strategy for choosing the correct configuration of plies of composite material in order to achieve great stiffness and structural strength with the minimum component weight.