Chassis Basics 1 - Chassis & Bodyshells

The chassis is the "skeleton" of the car - providing the structural strength,
and the mounting points for other components. In this section, we will be
looking at the various types of chassis design that have been used in cars.

Early Chassis Designs & Ladder-Frame Chassis

Many of the principles and

techniques used to build cars evolved
from the manufacture of horse-drawn
vehicles, and early chassis design
reflects this. The image on the left
shows a 1920's Dodge minus it's body,
and is a typical example of pre-war
chassis design: Two long rails running
the length of the vehicle, with the
engine mounted between them and
the axles suspended underneath. The
body would then be mounted on top of
the chassis.
This kind of chassis is generally known as a ladder-frame design, as the
members that run between the two rails resemble the rungs of a ladder when
viewed from above. To start with, the rails would have been simple, straight
lengths, but over time the design of these chassis incorporated bends to clear
axles, and to bring the rails closer together at the front where the engine
mounts and so on. Aside from such minor changes, the essense of a ladder-
frame chassis is unaltered since it's inception.
Building a chassis like this is technically undemanding: As long as you align
everything properly, you can weld all the joints manually, and the materials
used are cheap and easy to come by. However, it takes time to make all the
joints, and the resulting structure suffers from a lack of diagonal bracing - it
can be easily twisted along it's length. Also, the accepted technique for
making a stronger, more rigid chassis involved adding extra members and
using thicker material, which adds
weight.

In general, a ladder-frame chassis is

a crude, heavy structure that does not
really provide a good platform for
building a vehicle on. But why, then,
did the design last so long - the chassis on the right is from a '60s Land Rover,
and is pretty much identical to the design used in a 2005-model Defender?

To start with, the limitations of such a chassis design were irrelevant - the
general crudity of other aspects of vehicles meant that it was hard to isolate
what faults were purely down to the chassis, a factor compounded by a lack of
effective analysis techniques. When your suspension, steering and drivetrain
all have a large amount of play in them anyway, flex in the chassis is the least
of your problems.
Also, ladder-frame chassis do have some good points. First of all, when you
are talking about loadings such as carrying heavy payloads and impacts, they
are veryvery strong indeed - after all, what you are looking at are basically
steel girders. This is actually a major factor, as one of the most common
mistakes people make is to equate this kind of ultimate load capacity with
strength, often at the expense of a stiffer structure (more about this later). It is
this load-carrying capacity that results in ladder-frame chassis still being used
for the majority of trucks and commercial vehicles.

The ladder-frame's trump card, though, is

it's adaptability. Once you've built the
chassis, you can shorten, lengthen, widen, or
narrow the design quite easily. Also, with
only slight restrictions due to the placement
of major components, you can put pretty
much any body on top that you want. As
such, a saloon, convertible, pick-up and van can all be built on the same
chassis - one of the secrets of successful ladder-frame designs such as that
used by the Model T Ford and the Land Rover is to take this to the logical
conclusion of having a "modular" design - all bodies have their mounting
points in the same place, and so you use pretty much the exact same chassis
design for every model, without even having to add extra brackets on. Most
pre-war manufacturers would happily supply a chassis, with the mechanical
components attached, onto which an independent company (a coachbuilder)
would mount their own design of body. Again, this is why this design is so
good for commercial vehicles; most ambulances, motorhomes, and other
specialist applications are built independently on a "chassis-cab" unit supplied
by the manufacturer (left).

Overall, a ladder-frame chassis works well if you're not going to ask too
much of it, and you're willing to put in the time required to align and weld the
individual pieces together. For early vehicles, and for modern commercial
vehicles and off-roaders, the brute strength and adaptability advantages
outweigh the dynamic problems. For road and performance cars, though, as
the problems with things like suspension and steering were engineered out,
the limitations of ladder-frames became more and more of a hinderance,
particularly with regard to building a stiff structure. And this leads us on to...

Space-Frame Chassis

As we mentioned, the problem with a ladder-

frame chassis is that, although strong, it isn't very
stiff. The suspension and steering systems on cars
are designed on the basis that they are mounted to
a solid object, so having a chassis that "squirms"
under load prevents the suspension doing it's job
as intended. Obviously, this is a major issue when
you are designing a racing vehicle, and so it is here that we shall look. If you
were to try and make a ladder-frame chassis stiffer, you're natural starting
point would be to add bracing to prevent twist. The picture on the right shows
bracing struts on a chassis built by Lotus founder Colin Chapman, based on
the ladder-frame from an Austin 7, which stiffen up the structure significantly.

Once you start to introduce the idea of bracing a chassis against twisting, the
next logical progression is to consider the following fact: If the bracing is
preventing the chassis twisting, do the main chassis members have
to also resist twisting, or can you leave all those forces to the bracing
components? Working on this principal, it should be possible to build a
chassis where every single member has a bracing attachment, and has no
twisting forces acting on it - just compression and tension. It is this principle
that applies to spaceframes - removing bending forces acting on chassis
members to allow you to make them smaller, thinner and lighter at the same
time as building a stiffer overall structure.

The picture on the left shows a Maserati

"Birdcage" chassis, which is just about the
perfect example of this design philosophy.
Look at how thin the tubes are - because
each one has only tension and
compression loads, there's no need to
worry about them bending. Remember
how you used to make bridges out of
glued-together spaghetti when you were a
kid? Same principle - making sure each
member is only loaded in the direction which it's strongest.
 Obviously, not every gap between tubes can be braced (you need enough
room for the driver to sit in the car etc), so in reality the chassis members
must retain some resistance to bending. However, you still have a structure
that is much, much stiffer than a ladder-frame chassis at a far lower weight.
The downside is, with all those tubes running everywhere, you aren't left with
much space, which isn't good for carrying loads. Also, the design relies on
even distribution of loading, so isn't suited to carrying a couple of tons on the
back of a truck, for instance.

A secondary problem is that a spaceframe

is an utter nightmare to build. Even leaving
aside the difficulty of ensuring that all
required bracing has been designed in, the
trouble is that at some point you're going to
actually have to weld all the sections
together accurately. Even for a relatively
simple spaceframe, such as the Gordon
Keeble chassis pictured right, this is a hugely labour-intensive exercise - far
more so than any ladder-frame design.
On the plus side, there's nothing that exotic about the materials and
principles used, and if you're willing to dedicate the time to it, a very stiff, light
structure can be assembled without any special techniques. It is for this
reason that, although now overshadowed in terms of ultimate performance by
other designs, the space-frame chassis remains a very popular way of
building high-performance vehicles where speed of production, interior space,
and ultimate stiffness & weight-reduction can be sacrificed in exchange for
being able to use relatively basic materials and techniques: Most kit cars, as
well as many racing vehicles, use space-frame construction.

Backbone Chassis

A space-frame chassis works by

distributing the loadings on it across
the whole structure. However, as
mentioned, having to make room in the
middle for the driver reduces the
possibility of running bracing struts
across, and so reduces the possible
stiffness of the structure. If you instead
hung the passenger area on
the outside of the chassis, you would
have no issues with being able to fit
the bracing in place. Although this would necessitate moving the chassis rails
closer together to fit between the seats, the loss of stiffness this would cause
can be compensated for by the fact that you can now add almost unlimited
bracing to this central area. Rather than using several tubes, the easiest way
to accomplish this would be to use a panel across the surface of the frame -
effectively making a single, giant square-section down the centre of the
chassis. And if you're going to do that, you might as well just do away with all
the tubing and make the central section into a square-section made from
folded and welded sheet metal. On the chassis for the original Lotus Elan,
pictured here, you can see that this has been taken to the logical conclusion,
with most of the structure made from
folded sheets.

A backbone chassis like this can

actually be slightly stiffer than a
spaceframe of the same weight.
However, because the chassis has to
fit within the confines of the centre of
the body, it can only be made so stiff.
As such, it tends to lend itself better to
small or medium sized vehicles, as
large, powerful cars do not necessarily
have enough of a proportional
increase in the room available for the central backbone to allow it to be scaled
up to cope with the increased loads. This is not so much of an issue for
extremely large vehicles, though, and Czechoslovakian manufacturer Tatra
has successfully used a backbone chassis on large military trucks (right),
although in this case the chassis structure is tubular rather than square.
Although Colin Chapman is often credited with inventing the backbone design,
it's actually Tatra who first developed it.

A side note on backbone chassis is that, with the structural component of the
car in the centre, the outer body panels can be made from very light material
such as composites or aluminium. While this is good for weight-reduction, it
also means that a backbone chassis car is not necessarily the place you want
to be in the event of a side impact, as there isn't a lot there to protect you.
Saying that, the DeLorean was designed using a backbone chassis (with the
help of Lotus, as it happens), and was designed from the outset to be an
extremely safe car, with good side-impact protection. The secret here is that
the DeLorean was part backbone chassis, and part monocoque. In fact, this is
true for most backbone-chassis vehicle designs. Monowhat? We'll talk about
that later...

Floorpans & Tubs

Now that we've established the use of

folded sheet metal for chassis components,
it's time to look at designing a "chassis"
purely from sheet metal. The hard way of
doing this would be to take lots of individual
pieces of metal, fold them into tubes and
weld them together. The easy way is to press
two large sheets of metal with lots of ribs, and then sandwich them together
so that the ribs form tubes between the two sheets. You've now made a
similar structure to a ladder-frame chassis, only without messing around lining
up tubes. On the left is a VW Beetle floorpan - see how the pressed steel
forms a backbone-like structure along the length of the car? The Citroen 2CV
also used a floorpan like this. Doing this gives many of the advantages of a
ladder-frame chassis (such as the adaptability for various body designs)
without the time and labour penalties for manufacturing such a structure from
carefully-aligned individual components.

An improvement on the floorpan idea is to build a tub

out of sheet metal or composites, so that the "walls" of
the tub help add stiffness. The Lotus Elise chassis
shown right is a very good example of a tub design,
made from glued-together aluminium sheet. This gives
the car a very, very stiff structure onto which the other components can be
mounted - one of the reasons why the Elise is proclaimed by many to be the
best-handling production car ever built.

Monocoque Chassis

Ok, up until now, we've been looking

at designs where a chassis takes all
the structural loading, and the body
panels just sit on the outside and look
nice. The problem with this is that no
matter how light you make the chassis,
you're going to be adding weight when
you put the body panels in place.
There are two solutions to this
problem. First, you could fit only the bare minimum of panels required to cover
the chassis, made from the thinnest, lightest material easily available to you
(say, sheet aluminium). If you did, then, you'd probably end up with something
like the Lotus Seven pictured left, which is little more than a thinly-skinned
chassis.
Alternatively, you could make the body panels work for you. As we saw
previously, you can use shaped sheet metal to make chassis sections as well
as body panels. Logically, therefore, you could use the body panels
themselves as chassis members, and eliminate unnecessary weight from
having both. If you did this, what you would have is called a monocoque
("single shell"). The idea of having the panels of a structure that give it it's
outer appearance also providing the structural strength is nothing new (most
aircraft are constructed this way - often referred to as "stressed skin"
construction), and is simply a progression of the use of pressed panels we
discussed in the previous section. However, instead of only making "sandwich
tubes" for the floor, you do the same for the side panels as well. If a floorpan
is like a ladder-frame made from pressed sheet, then a monocoque is like a
similarly-constructed spaceframe. Because you're able to press complicated
shapes, rather than just using straight tubes, you're not as limited with where
bracing members can be placed, so you can build a stiff structure that still has
plenty of room inside, without bloody great tubes running everywhere.

With the ability to build light, stiff

structures that can still be very "open
plan" inside, coupled with the ease of
construction in a production-line
environment (especially with modern
robotised factories), monocoque
construction is now the technique of
choice for mass-production vehicles.
Although lacking the absolute strength
of a heavy ladder-frame chassis, and
bettered by other designs in terms of weight and stiffness, the pressed-steel-
panel monocoque is currently the best compromise available once you have
to take cost and production concerns into account, and is likely to remain so
for several years to come.

Although the thinner material used in monocoque designs compared to

tubular-based structures is easier to buckle, if it wasn't for this factor, we
wouldn't be able to have the safety-enhancing "crumple zones" built into
modern cars. By allowing the energy of a crash to be distributed around
several panels, crumpling them in the process, the length of time it takes the
vehicle to come to a full stop is extended - thereby reducing the accelerative
forces on the occupants. Although such systems can be incorporated into the
ends of chassis rails, for example, it is nearly impossible to provide as high a
level of protection with a traditional separate chassis arrangement. The payoff,
of course, is that you completely trash the bodyshell in the impact - but this is
regarded as a price worth paying to save lives. These crumple zones can be
made to act in any direction, so allow you to design for side impacts too, and
this highlights the major advantage of pressing sheets to shape compared to
using tubular material - you can choose which directions you want a
component to be stiff in, and which to make it easily collapsible.

Subframes

In most instances, a car will have all it's major

components mounted directly to the chassis.
However, in some cases, a subframe will be used.
This is an individual "mini-chassis" that carries
certain components (such as the engine and
drivetrain, or the rear suspension) as an assembly,
and is then attached to the main chassis or
bodyshell. The best known use of subframes is in a
mini (left), where a front subframe carries the engine, gearbox and front
suspension, and a rear subframe carries the rear suspension, but many cars
use a simple subframe as the mounting point for the rear suspension.
In most cases, a subframe design is used in conjunction with a monocoque
design - There's no reason why you couldn't use a subframe with a ladder-
frame or space-frame chassis, though there would be no real advantage to
doing so.

The advantage of a subframe is that it allows

you to assemble components
together beforeyou assemble the whole
vehicle, and gives you the adaptability benefits
of a ladder-frame chassis - you can use one
subframe assembly with several designs of
bodyshell, and you can get many of the
stiffness benefits of a space-frame or
backbone chassis at critical points (such as
the suspension mountings) without sacrificing the benefits of using a
monocoque bodyshell to build the vehicle's main structure. This is particularly
true where the first monocoque designs are concerned, as such early
examples were not always as stiff as they could be, and being able to have a
rigid "traditional" chassis for things like suspension mounting points gave a
certain amount of belt-and-braces reassurance. In modern designs, however,
the chief advantage is that you can have very tight, accurate tolerances on the
sub assembly, with the accuracy of the alignment of the major structure less
critical to things like correct suspension alignment.

Chassis Basics 2 - Chassis Materials

Traditionally, the most common material for manufacturing vehicle chassis
has been steel, in various forms. Over time, other materials have come into
use, the majority of which have been covered here.

Steel

Let's face it. Steel is easy to get. Machinery to

manipulate steel is easy to get. People who know
how to work with steel are easy to get. Steel is
easy - and it's also cheap. This is the main reason
why 99% of the cars you find are made from steel,
although the fact that it's actually a very useful
material plays no small part. Steel is by no means a
"does the job" or "poor man's" option - the material
has many attributes that render it perfect for vehicle chassis manufacturing.
First, yes, the cost and availability (of both the material and what you need to
process it) are a major advantage for commercial production, but the physical
properties are also highly beneficial.

As we've already covered, the main aim with a chassis is to build a stiff
structure to ensure other components can work as they're designed to, and
steel really scores in this respect, as it's a pretty stiff material. In addition, steel
rates well in terms of both yield strength (how likely it is to bend permanently
under load) and ultimate strength, particularly if it's carefully alloyed and
processed. Steel also resists fatigue failure well (fatigue failure is where a
material fails due to repeated loading and unloading, even though the loads
involved may be far below the ultimate strength of the material). This last fact
is extremely useful - even if the chassis flexes under load, such flexing need
not lead to a critical failure.
 The fly in the ointment with steel is it's weight, or more accurately it's density
(mass of material for a given volume). Steel is made from iron, and it's density
isn't far off. Most of the time, this wasn't an issue, as the weight of a car didn't
use to be of too much concern. As time has progressed, however, saving
weight has become more of a priority - partly to aid fuel economy, and partly
to allow for the addition of safety equipment without resulting in a vehicle that
weighs as much as a small tank.

Although steel does corrode when exposed to adverse environments, such

corrosion is not too much of a concern: A good coating, properly prepared and
applied, will offer excellent protection. Only when damage is sustained which
reveals bare metal does this factor become an issue.

Overall, the benefits steel has as a material for chassis building far outweigh
the problems of using it, and it seems that this is likely to remain the case for
the forseeable future where production vehicles are concerned.

As a side benefit, no matter where you are in the world, you will always be
able to find someone who is able to work on a steel structure. For a family
hatchback, this is irrelevant. For a 4x4 being used as an expedition vehicle to
the arse-end of nowhere, it's crucial.

Aluminium

Aluminium is probably the material that springs to

mind when you think about lighter alternatives to
steel, and with good reason - the density of
aluminium is in the region of 35% of that of steel.
However, the first thing we should cover is the fact
that when we talk about aluminium as a structural
material, we are almost always talking about
an alloy of aluminium - with an addition of magnesium, zinc etc depending
upon the intended end use of the metal. The reason for this is that raw
aluminium has too low a yield strength for structural use in a vehicle chassis.

Once alloyed, however, aluminium's yield strength can be increased

considerably, and is perfectly suitable for such applications. Alloying doesn't
have so great an effect on the stiffness of the metal, though, and aluminium
cannot compete like for like with steel, which is about three times as stiff. As
such, in order to make use of the weight saving that can be achieved through
the use of aluminium, a way of circumventing this stiffness problem must be
found.
 If we think about a component of a chassis, such as a round tube, the loads
acting on that tube can be assumed to act along it's centerline. The metal wall
of the tube, being a certain distance away from this centerline, effectively has
a leverage against these loads. The larger the diameter of the tube, the more
leverage the material has to act against the load. This is a simple way of
looking at the logic used to design a structure from aluminium - with the lower
weight of aluminium compared to steel, you can have a large-diameter
aluminium chassis tube that saves weight over a regular-diameter steel
equivalent, while still maintaining the required stiffness. A similar effect can be
obtained through simply thickening the wall of the tubes. If you were to build a
structure from steel and another from aluminium, using exactly the same
material thicknesses etc, the aluminium version would exhibit far reduced
stiffness.

It is critical, however, that an aluminium structure is stiff, as the material has

a far lower fatigue tolerance than steel. It is this need to eliminate fatique that
results in aluminium structures tending to be built stiffer than steel equivalents,
not an inherent property of aluminium as a material. With all these differences,
it is unsurprising that the weight difference between aluminium and steel
designs with the same specification does not approach the 65% density
difference, though weight is generally saved.

Despite a much higher cost than steel, and additional problems in working
with it, aluminium does have a secure place in chassis building. It should also
be noted that aluminium alloys are also less likely to suffer from corrosion
problems than steel, due to the material forming an outer oxide layer (surface
corrosion, basically) that prevents further corroding.

Titanium

Titanium has an association with space

tech, and is regarded by many people as an
"ultimate" material. It has a density roughly
half that of steel, and also a little over half the
stiffness value. It's a similar situation with
regards to ultimate and yield strengths.

Understandably, this means that the

methods used to build with titanium are similar to those for building with
aluminium: Tubing should be larger in diameter than for steel, to compensate
for the lower inherent stiffness, though this does not need to be as
pronounced as with aluminium. Again, when we talk about using titanium to
build structures, we are referring to alloys rather than raw metal, though
straight titanium is not as weak as straight aluminium.

A major advantage of titanium is it's resistance to corrosion, and also to

fatigue failure. It costs, though: Titanium is not a cheap material by any stretch
of the imagination, and is impractical to use for any normal road vehicle.

Magnesium

Magnesium is the lightest metal that's likely to be used in a

vehicle chassis, with a density about quarter that of steel.
This weight advantage helps to compensate for the fact that
it's strength and rigidity is below even aluminium, and with
careful design can be used to build a light, stiff structure.

Magnesium can react quite easily, and will ignite under

extreme circumstances. Although in most cases the sections
of material used in vehicles are too thick to be at risk from
this, it does mean that special care needs to be taken during
manufacture - particularly with filings from machining operations etc.

Currently, the use of magnesium in vehicles is generally restricted to cast

shapes for mounting brackets, braces and so on, though several
manufacturers are working on using magnesium sheet and extruded sections
where possible. The fact that magnesium is a very common element, and that
it is easy to recycle, are attractive properties for manufacturers, particularly
with legislation moving towards things like guaranteed end-of-life recyclability
for new cars. One area where it has been used for decades, however, is in the
construction of high-strength, low weight wheels. Most "alloy wheels" you see
on vehicles are made from aluminium alloys, but competition-spec equipment
(e.g. the original "Minilight" wheel, and the Compomotive-brand wheels used
by World Rally Cars) is often made from a magnesium alloy. Aluminium alloys
are much cheaper, which is why that's what most road vehicles use if they're
not fitted with steel wheels. A mag-alloy wheel comes in at four to five times
the cost of an aluminium-based equivalent.

Fibreglass

Raw plastics do not have anywhere near

enough stiffness to be used for structural
components in cars. If strands of glass are
added to the mixture, though, their properties
improve remarkably. This gives you a Glass Fibre Reinforced Plastic (GFRP
or GRP), most commonly referred to as fibreglass.

Like a plastic, fibreglass can be moulded to practically any shape. Although

nowhere near as stiff or strong as steel, the ability to create practically any
shape allows you to compensate for this. A bodyshell or tub may be created in
a single piece, with no seams that could be weak points, and made with
variable thickness - Extremely thick near high-load areas such as suspension
mountings, and very thin in unstressed panels, all in the same unit. It is this
infinite variability across a structure that allows a properly designed fibreglass
construction to be both stiff and light.

It takes time to lay up (make) a fibreglass structure, though, and this is not
always practical - though the material can be squeezed into shape by a mould
well, and sections can be joined without the join representing a change in
material structure. About the only concerns with using fibreglass are the
possibility of the material being attacked by chemicals (e.g. certain types of
paint cannot be applied directly to fibreglass), and issues with creep. At higher
temperatures, it is possible for fibreglass to soften and flow slightly, which can
cause damage in the event of a fire, or if hot engine-bay components such as
the exhaust manifold run too close to panels.

Traditionally, fibreglass has been used for specialist applications like sports
cars most of all, and is often used in conjunction with a separate chassis or
subframes rather than alone. Even if a bodyshell is made to be a stand-alone
fibreglass structure, metal inserts are still usually used to spread the load at
mounting points etc.

Carbon Fibre

Carbon fibre is very similar to fibreglass, only

with carbon strands rather than glass strands
as the reinforcing medium - it's correct
description would be Carbon Fibre Reinforced
Plastic (CFRP/CRP), though almost everyone
refers to it as simply "carbon fibre".

It is a lot like fibreglass, only despite a density

that is almost exactly the same, it can have the
strength of an aluminium alloy and the stiffness of steel. The key to this is that,
unlike fibreglass, where the strands are pretty much random, carbon fibre
uses a woven matt of fibres - this is what gives it it's distinctive appearance.
Getting the full strength and stiffness advantages requires maintaining the
correct alignment of this weave, and so carbon fibre structures cannot be
compression moulded, they have to be laid up in layers. This requires time
and skill, and is probably the biggest factor in the high cost of using carbon
fibre.

If you are on a fairly impressive budget, and need the maximum possible
stiffness and strength combined with minimum weight, carbon fibre is possibly
the best option around, which is why the tub chassis used in F1 cars are all
carbon fibre. For road vehicles, though, the cost is just too frightening, and the
use of carbon fibre tends to be restricted to large, reasonably flat panels (such
as roof panels and bonnets), where the best "bang for buck" weight savings
can be found.

Chassis Basics 3 - Chassis Joining

No matter what design of chassis is used for a vehicle, or what material is
chosen to build it, as some point joints are going to have to be made.

Seam Welding

Welding is where two metal components are

joined by melting them into each other where they
meet. The heat to do this can be generated through
either burning gas or electrical resistance; Gas
welding uses acetylene, and pure oxygen is added
to produce a flame hot enough to melt metal (air is
only 21% oxygen). For metals with a melting point
below the 1500C (roughly) of steel, other gases
may be a viable option for welding. An additional rod of fillet metal, with a
coating of flux, is dipped into the weld as it is made to create a stronger joint,
and the flux helps prevent getting oxygen in the molten metal, which would
weaken the structure.

For electrical welding, the fillet material can be

used as a conductor, with a current passing
through the metal to generate the heat. In arc
welding, the welding rod is literally just that - a rod,
which has to be replaced as it is consumed. As with
gas welding, the rod can also contain flux to help
prevent oxygen getting into the weld, and this
leaves a slag on the surface of the weld, which has to be removed afterwards
(generally knocked off with a hammer). In MIG (Metal Inert Gas) welding, the
rod is replaced with a spool of wire which is fed through a flexible tube to a
hand-held "gun" whenever the "trigger" is pulled. This also opens a valve to
allow inert (non-reactive) gas to flow, which covers the area of the weld to
prevent oxygen getting in. TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) is similar, with the
exception of the reel of wire. Instead, a tungsten tip is used, which is not
consumed during welding. As with gas welding, an additional rod can be used
to add extra material. MIG/TIG welding can easily be robotised, which is a
major advantage for production line work.

Seam welding involves producing a long line of weld to join components -

generally the entire surface where they meet. This gives an extremely strong
join, though there is the risk of the amount of heat involved creating distortion
problems, especially with thin material. It also takes time to run that amount of
weld, and time, as they say, is money.

Spot Welding

Spot welding is a form of electrical welding used

to fasten two sheets together. Two stubby rods
clamp the sheets, and pass the electric current
through that point to join them. Although not as
strong as seam welding, due to less weld area and
load forces not being equally distributed across the
joint, it's strong enough for most purposes, and is
fast and easy to robotise. This makes it very
suitable for production lines, and is the technique
used for producing monocoque bodyshells in car
factories worldwide. It is also effective at reducing the chances of distortion
due to heating the surrounding panel compared to
traditional welding.

A spot weld can also be created by making a

small hole in one panel, and then welding through
to the other panel. This is an accepted way of
welding in replacement panels so the joints look the
same as the original, but without the need for a
spot welder, and is often referred to as "plug"
welding - because the act of welding fills up the
hole with a plug of weld.
 Spot welding is only applicable where sheet materials are being used - it
cannot be employed to join two tubes together, for instance. Also, because a
spot weld does not seal a joint, the design of chassis panels must take this
into account: Early Minis let in water because the seam-welded joints on
prototypes had stopped anyone spotting where an overlapping panel could
trap rainwater, which then got past the spot welds on production models. The
design of the panels was later changed to overlap the other way.

Stitch Welding

Stitch welding is very similar to seam welding,

only short welds are spaced along the join rather
than a continuous run being used. Other than that,
it's pretty much the same. Using stitch welding can
help avoid distortion, as less heat is put into the
material.

This technique is not used often in chassis manufacture: In most instances,

you might as well just go all the way and seam weld. However, if a chassis is
going to be galvanised to prevent corrosion, stitch welding helps: Galvanising
is a chemical process that dips components in a very hot bath to coat them.
Seam welds can sometimes trap air between parts, which expands with the
heat and cracks the weld. Stitch welding leaves a gap that can allow the
gases to escape.

Bolts & Threaded Fasteners

Bolts, nuts and screws have the advantage that

they can be removed non-destructively and re-
used, so that an assembly may be dismantled and
rebuilt with no new material or parts (unless the
fittings stretch in use etc, but we'll ignore that one).
This also means that separate components can be
loosened and realigned as necessary, or replaced if damaged. Also, dissimilar
materials may be joined together (subject to them having a reaction to each
other, of course).

The downsides are that the fasteners can come loose due to vibration etc,
and that the join is not as stiff as a welded alternative. Also, in a similar
manner to spot welding, the load at joints has to pass through the fasteners,
and may not be evenly distributed.
 Generally, threaded fasteners are mostly used to attach components to a
chassis rather than to build the chassis itself. There are exceptions to this,
though, where components need to be varied for different models, for
example, or where a part of the chassis needs to be removeable (e.g. a
bracing strut that blocks access for engine removal).

Rivets

A rivet secures joints in the same way as using a

bolt, only the clamping force is generated by
crushing the ends of a short rod that runs through
the hole, rather than tightening the fastener down.
Traditional rivets, as originally used for heavy-duty
construction like bridges and ships, were literally
forced into shape after being heated up to soften
them. There is absolutely no problem with this
technique - it's still used - but it is quite labour intensive.

What is more commonly used in automotive applications is a "pop" rivet.

These use a hollow tube with a flange on it, and a pin running from the end
without the flange and protruding an inch or so out the other end. The hollow
tube is pushed through the hole in the components to be joined, then the pin
is pulled. This crushes the tube back against the flange, sandwiching the joint
in between, after which the pin can be snapped off. This is obviously a much
faster method, and is also easy to robotise if
needed.

Other than the speed, rivets have no real

advantage over threaded fasteners (Though they
are more resistant to loosening under vibration).
They cannot be removed without destroying them
(usually by drilling them out), and cannot be
retightened if they loosen. When designing with
rivets in mind, it is preferable to ensure that they
are loaded in shear (across the rivet) rather than in
tension (along the length of the rivet). The most common use for rivetted joints
is in additional brackets, panels etc rather than major structural joining. Many
vehicles (from kit cars to Thrust SSC) use rivets to hold their outer panelling in
place, and aircraft have done so for decades - The picture above left is of a
section of fuselage from a B52 bomber.
 Generally, riveting is not favoured in vehicle production, and most areas
where a rivet may have been used in the past are now spot welded.

Bonded Joints

Yes, we do mean gluing cars together. Another

assembly technique time-served in the aerospace
industry, most of the adhesives used are of the epoxy
variety - some using an accelerant (hardener) to create a
chemical reaction to cure the glue, others needing to be
heated in an oven to attain full strength. Most are very
similar to household brands like Araldite (left).

A bonded joint is a very good way to join materials

together, as it allows the load at the join to be spread
across the entire mating surface evenly. As with seam
welding, this prevents load "hot spots" that you can get with spot welding or
mechanical fasteners, and so the materials used do not have to be designed
to cope with this - allowing you to use thinner, lighter panels. Using an
adhesive also avoids the issue of heat that can be a problem with welding, as
even adhesives designed to be set by heat rarely require the kind of
temperatures that would affect the metal they are joining.

As far as strength goes, most commercial

adhesives are very strong, and when a high quality,
heat curing industrial adhesive is used, it's entirely
possible that the component parts of the structure
itself would fail before the adhesive.

Joining materials this way does require good

surface preparation to ensure maximum strength
and durability, but has the advantage of allowing
dissimilar materials to be joined. This does not
affect recyclability, as adhesives are often chosen
that will break down again if enough heat is applied, so that the various
materials can be separated out for further processing.

Bonded joints are used in the assembly of almost all composite-structure

vehicles like F1 cars and supercars, as well as in some aluminium-framed
vehicles such as the Lotus Elise. Sometimes additional fasteners, such as
rivets, will be used as well to both provide backup, and so that the joints can
be held in place long enough to fully cure without the assembly having to stay
mounted on a jig.

Chassis Basics 4 - Chassis Improvements

As standard, most chassis are designed to meet a minimum set of
requirements at a reasonable price - as such, there are usually improvements
that can be made for vehicles that are going to be used for heavy duty
applications and racing.

Material Choice

If possible, one of the best ways to improve upon

a design is to ensure that the most suitable
materials are being used. Steel, for example, is
available in various grades, and rebuilding a
chassis using a higher grade will give strength
benefits - In drag racing, the chassis of a
competing vehicle must be built from a minimum
grade of metal in order to run in certain classes.

Another good example of this is in tubing; the cheapest way to make tubing
is to take a flat sheet of metal, roll it into shape, and then weld the seam (such
tubes are referred to as electrical resistance welded, or ERW - the picture on
the left shows a machine used to do this on an industrial scale). However, this
seam can be a weak point, and so extruding out a tube in one (seamless)
piece is preferable. Given that most of the time, a space frame chassis is built
for a specialised purpose, seamless tubing will be used, this is more relevant
when building additional components such as rollcages (below).

Remember - as we said in the section on chassis materials, completely

different materials cannot be interchanged without redesigning the structure to
suit their different properties. A steel chassis rebuilt to exactly the same
specifications from aluminium or titanium will be far lighter, but much more
susceptible to flexing.

Bracing

Additional bracing can be fitted to stiffen up a chassis,

and to reinforce things like mounting points. During the
sixties, the sports versions of Ford Escorts used
different bodyshells to the regular versions, with the
addition of small reinforcement panels at critical points. These not only made
the shell stiffer, but also strengthened it with a view to competition use.

Tubular bracing is often used to triangulate across areas of the chassis that
have been left open to allow for other components - engine bays etc. A
common modification to monocoque bodyshells is to run a brace between the
tops of the suspension mounts, to prevent flexing.

Again, this is not because of any inherent

inadequacies with the original design, but due to
the fact that a chassis is designed with a balance
between cost and performance - a balance that
changes depending on whether you are dealing
with a family hatchback or a sportscar. Additional
bracing adds cost, and can also reduce practicality
(access for servicing, for example), and so if you
can get away without it, it's generally not included on a production model.

Care needs to be taken when designing extra bracing that it does not cause
loads to be transferred onto points that aren't designed to cope with the forces
involved. As such, most bracing runs between points that are already load-
bearing, and uses plates to spread the loads where required.

Rollcages

A rollcage is basically a space frame chassis

designed with protection in mind, which is retro-
fitted to an existing chassis primarily for added
reinforcement in the event of a roll-over or other
serious accident. Rollcages (properly referred to
as "roll-over protection devices") vary from a
simple bent tube behind the driver's seat to a
fully welded-in frame mounting to a dozen or more points on the car.

Properly-designed rollcages also give the same stiffening advantages as

fitting bracing, and are often linked up to suspension mounting points etc. The
rollcages fitted to a professional rally or touring car offer enough reinforcement
to render the original monocoque almost obsolete.

For racing use, regulations will often state that an

rollcage of certain minimum specifications is
required, and professionally-built cages are usually
made to meet a given set of regulations. As a minimum, it is usually required
that the cage be manufactured from seamless tubing, with a specific thickness
and grade of metal.

The safety benefits of rollcages should not be underestimated - many

drivers, including celebrities like Colin McRae, owe their lives to them, and if
you've ever seen the mess that a high-speed crash can make of a bodyshell,
it's easy to understand why they are insisted on for competition.

Welding Improvements

As most bodyshells are manufactured by spot

welding the panels together, a simple way to stiffen
them up is to either stitch or seam weld them
instead. As with welding during construction of a
chassis, care must be taken to avoid problems due
to excessive heat.

Normally, additional welding is concentrated on specific areas, such as

suspension mounting points or the engine bay, as it is quite a labour intensive
technique. Most of the time, a full rollcage would be fitted instead of additional
welding, but in some instances where a cage is not going to be used, full
welding of the entire shell can take place.