Engine Bracket Breaking Grooves for Collision Separation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional engine brackets with notches in bolt tightening holes fail to consistently achieve the required breakage during vehicle collisions, compromising passenger safety due to reduced bolt tightening force and inconsistent breakage performance.
Innovation Solution
An engine bracket with breaking grooves formed away from the bolt holes, allowing for controlled tightening force and breakage strength, ensuring consistent separation of the power unit from the vehicle body during collisions while maintaining stable support during normal driving conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If notches are formed in the inner peripheral surface of bolt tightening holes to ensure breakage during collisions, then breakage reliability is improved, but the area of the surface subject to bolt tightening force is reduced, worsening power unit support strength
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the attachment portion into two distinct functional zones: a breaking portion with notches that concentrates stress to ensure consistent breakage during collisions, and a tightening portion with sufficient surface area that maintains power unit support strength during normal operation. This spatial segmentation resolves the contradiction by allowing each zone to optimize its specific function without compromising the other.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different structural characteristics to different locations of the attachment portion. The breaking portion has notches that create stress concentration for reliable breakage, while the tightening portion has a larger surface area for stable bolt attachment. This local differentiation allows the structure to simultaneously achieve both breakage reliability and support strength in their respective functional areas.
2Reliability
If larger sized or greater numbers of notches are provided in the inner peripheral surface of bolt tightening holes to ensure consistent breakage, then breakage consistency is improved, but the surface area for bolt tightening force is further reduced, worsening support reliability over time
Solution Approach 1:
The patent spatially separates the breaking function and tightening function into different portions of the attachment portion. The breaking portion can accommodate larger or more notches for consistent breakage without affecting the tightening portion's surface area, thereby maintaining both breakage consistency and long-term support reliability.
3Strength
If fixing bolts are tightened in an extremely firm manner to ensure stable support, then power unit support strength is improved, but breakage may not occur consistently during collisions due to high bolt strength
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a local stress concentration zone in the breaking portion through notches, which ensures that breakage occurs at this specific location regardless of the overall bolt tightening strength. The tightening portion can be firmly secured to provide stable support, while the breaking portion's localized weakness ensures consistent breakage under collision loads.
Data Source
AI summary
An engine bracket including: an attachment portion provided in a fixing location adapted to be fixed to at least one of the vehicle body and power unit; a bolt hole being formed in the attachment portion so that the attachment portion is fixed to the vehicle body or power unit by a fixing bolt inserted into the bolt hole; and at lease one breaking groove formed at an area located spaced away from the bolt hole so as to extend away from the bolt hole and toward an outer peripheral edge of the attachment portion on at least one of opposite surfaces of the attachment portion in a direction in which the fixing bolt is inserted.