Finite element analysis of an agriculturel tractor protective cab under static load

Today, traffic safety is one of the most important public problem for that reason forsecurity of the life; vehicles have to make some static and dynamic crush test beforethey come into the traffic by international standards. There have been national andinternational standards minimizing the likelihood of driver injury due to accidentaloverturning of tractors. According to them agricultural wheeled tractor must have totake protective cab or protective ring. And kind of static and dynamic tests are madeon the protective cab for testing their safety according to standards too. But it isexpensive and time- consuming to constitute the test condition. These tests can makeby using finite element method by a computer. By using of this method, the effect ofchanges in the stiffness or collapse properties of some elements on the behavior ofthe complete structure can be studied easily and quickly. By means of theminvestment cash and time which spend for design stages can reduce.In this thesis, static testing methods and respective acceptance conditions regulatedin TS 3412 and A. .T.M.Y are explained. Then bilinear and multilinear materielmodel which used in the analysis of protective cab, are given. Then ANSYS finiteelement model of the protective cab, for which measured force vs. displacementcurve already known is constructed and displacement boundary conditions areapplied. The results are well acceptable if you compared with experimental [11]results based on plastic deformation of the protective cab or energy which absorbedby the protective cab.Key words: Finite element analysis, tractor protective cab, static loading tests