Vehicle Cargo Bracket With Bosses For Beam Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
The transition to lighter materials and enhanced structural designs in vehicle cargo beds has led to issues with metal incompatibility, strength changes, and assembly challenges, resulting in increased labor costs and design complexities.
Innovation Solution
A structural arrangement using elongate principal beams with brackets that include a bracket web and flange, where the flange extends perpendicular to support lateral beams, and bosses ensure alignment, allowing for secure assembly with a single non-orienting fastener, utilizing separate fabricable elements like flat plates and extrusions for efficient assembly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Weight of moving object
If lighter materials are used in vehicle cargo beds, then weight reduction is achieved, but metal incompatibility and assembly complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The bracket is divided into two separately fabricable elements: a flat plate and an extrusion with flange and leg. These segments can be manufactured independently using different materials (e.g., aluminum extrusion with steel plate) to resolve metal incompatibility issues while maintaining the overall structural function of supporting lateral beams between principal beams.
Solution Approach 2:
The bracket acts as an intermediary component between the principal beams and lateral beams. By using a hybrid construction of plate and extrusion joined by fasteners, the bracket mediates between different metal types, allowing compatible material pairings while reducing overall weight compared to traditional all-steel constructions.
2Strength
If traditional single-piece brackets are used, then structural integrity is maintained, but manufacturing cost and assembly time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The bracket is segmented into a flat plate portion and an extrusion portion with flange and leg, which can be manufactured separately through efficient high-volume processes like extrusion and plate fabrication, then quickly assembled using simple fasteners, thereby increasing productivity while maintaining structural integrity.
Solution Approach 2:
The plate and extrusion elements are merged through fastener connection to form a complete bracket assembly that provides the necessary structural strength. This combining of separately fabricated elements achieves both manufacturing efficiency and structural performance.
3Manufacturing precision
If multiple fasteners are used to secure brackets, then alignment precision is improved, but assembly time and labor cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The bosses extending past the bracket flange provide self-aligning features that guide the lateral beam into proper position during assembly. This self-service alignment mechanism eliminates the need for multiple precision fasteners, reducing assembly time and labor cost while maintaining adequate alignment precision through the inherent geometry of the bosses and flange configuration.
Data Source
AI summary
A structural assembly for load carrying chassis of vehicles includes beams extending fore and aft on the chassis with passages laterally through the beam webs. I-beams extend through the passages through the beams. Brackets are fixed to the principal beams at the passages. The brackets each include a bracket web, a bracket flange extending from the bracket web and two bosses on the bracket web extending past the bracket flange. The bosses of each of the brackets extend to either side of lower I-beam flanges. The bracket flanges extend through the passages in contact with the beams in the passages. The brackets are shown as integrally formed or as composite assemblies of a plate and an extrusion.