ABSTRACT

Flat Bed trailers are employed in heavy automobiles to carry tonnes of loads safely. These trailers have a big role to play as far as the safety of the cargo loaded is concerned. With more and more industrialization the rate at which these trailers are fabricated are increasing. This work has been carried out on one of the major I-Beams carrying a larger load comparatively. The CAD model of the I beam is initially prepared with the help of existing drawings. It is then followed by implementation of Finite element method in the static structural analysis workbench of CATIA V5. FEM results led us to the determination of stress and deflections in the existing model. In order to reach the most optimum dimensions several models in the form of different dimensions of flange, web and width were tested and the most optimum dimension was selected. The selection was based on the satisfaction of several factors in the form of load carrying capacity, stress induced and deflection.