Design and Structural Analysis of Composite Oil Pan with Limited Boundary Conditions

In recent years, there has been an increase in the emission of carbon dioxide from the automobile sector. The primary goal of the automobile industry’s research and development departments is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while also improving vehicle noise, vibration, and harshness performance. To achieve this, weight reduction in every automotive vehicle part is important. Today, the automotive sectors face significant worldwide problems, including increased market competitiveness, rising fuel costs, reduced fuel usage, lower CO emissions, and government regulatory requirements. As a result, lightweight materials are essential for solving these challenges. Many car manufacturers are engaging in research and development with the goal of achieving considerable weight reductions in automobiles. In this project, the main objective is to reduce the weight of automotive oil pan, which will, in turn, reduce carbon dioxide emissions. For that, one of the solutions is to change the material used in the oil pan. Modern composite materials are frequently rival metals; in fact, their characteristics are often superior to those of steel and aluminum. The procedure of replacing a metal oil pan with a composite one is described in this thesis. A model was created using Creo Parametric in the first step. On ANSYS, a design revision of the oil pan is presented, as well as an outline of finite element modeling. After that, a static structural analysis will be performed using operating loads, boundary conditions, and design optimization on several materials; one of which is the oil pan’s basic material, aluminum, and the other three being material combinations. Finally, the weight reduction results from the metal replacement are displayed. When compared to an aluminum oil pan, the weight decrease is greater than 50%.