Design to New Heights

Fire Truck

Taking

Creativity and optimizatio technology extend extends fire-fighting capabilities

by Beverly A. Beckert

Concept To Reality / Fall 2003

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Pierce Manufacturing Inc., Appleton, WI, has been in business for 90 years. Founded by Humphrey and Dudley Pierce, the company is now a subsidiary of the Oshkosh Truck Corp. and designs and manufactures custom fire apparatus for every need. The companys goal is to deliver the utmost in safety and reliability to its customers. That's why it insists on the highest levels of quality in engineering, R&D, testing and craftsmanship. This commitment to quality is evident in a recent addition to the Pierce aerial product line. In an effort to extend its product offerings, the company decided to introduce a heavy-duty tiller-style ladder apparatus with an increased tip-load capacity. This new offering provides the fire fighters a greater aerial capacity along with improved storage for equipment and ground ladders, all packaged into a traditional tiller configuration designed for maximum maneuverability in tight quarters. However, this desired functionality significantly impacted the weight of the overall aerial system and, more importantly, needed to be fully investigated, as lives depended on it. To comply with tip-load as well as road-load requirements, engineers applied finite-element analysis (FEA) and optimization technology to minimize the weight while ensuring the integrity of safety-critical components for this aggressive new design concept.

A Specialized Market
Pierce competes for business with more than 50 fire truck manufacturers in the U.S. The company is said to rank number one in domestic sales and overall perceived quality. Production volumes are small in this industry. Each firehouse typically has its own vehicle operational requirements. In addition, there are regional requirements to satisfy. Whats more, Pierce must meet federal motor vehicle safety standards for medium/heavyduty trucks as well as the National Fire Protection Associations Standard 1901. Thats why all fire trucks are custom-built to some extent, according to Roger Lackore, director of New Product Development at Pierce. Depending on the type of apparatus, the company's fire trucks range in price from $130,000 to more than $600,000.

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An Exacting Process
The product development process for a new fire truck takes approximately 24 months from the time the Pierce team looks at a market and understands product configuration to the point it has apparatus in production. We start with individual components and design the package from the ground up, says Lackore, assembling and fabricating our own cab to build the vehicle from its constituent parts. Pierce maintains a close working relationship with its customers. As part of its development process, the company creates the product definition and identifies best-in-class features derived, in part, from interviewing customers as well as from assessing market direction and competitors' offerings.

In the design of a new, heavy-duty, tiller-style ladder apparatus, Pierce Manufacturing Inc. and Altair Engineering employed optimization technology to minimize the weight while ensuring the integrity of safetycritical components including the "gooseneck" (above) and frame rails.

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There are always trade-offs, however, particularly in packaging, performance, weight and cost. According to Lackore, We juggle these characteristics for each feature to come up with a package and options that will hit the market while satisfying customers needs. Lackore adds that design trade-offs are a constant challenge. Our customers, he says, demand that every bit of available vehicle space and capacity be optimized to meet their needs. We are always trying to fit more features into the same sized package, but no one is willing to give up anything. I liken the process to playing with Silly Putty. You can squeeze your design package in one direction, but the material displaced just pops out somewhere else. The trick is to balance all the features to produce the very best configuration overall. Traditionally, the fire apparatus industry has not relied on virtual prototyping. Instead, actual prototypes are built and physical tests performed to ensure quality before going into production. Redesigning in the prototype stage, though, can quickly eat into the bottom line and significantly delay product delivery for low-volume manufacturers. While continuing to perform physical tests to validate final designs, Pierce has increasingly relied on virtual design practices to improve design quality and shrink its new product development time to market. For the new heavy-duty, tiller-style ladder apparatus

with increased tip-load capacity, Pierce set up a pilot project with product design consulting company Altair Engineering. The Pierce/Altair team completely redesigned the new tiller trailer with an eye to reducing weight while increasing equipment storage capacity. The Altair experts based in Milwaukee, WI, assisted Pierce in achieving these objectives. Weight of the load-bearing structure was reduced by several thousand pounds while compartment volume increased by 20%.

Lightening the Load

The traditional tiller configuration consists of a tractor and trailer. The tractor houses the cab, crew and the engine while the tiller trailer creates a stable platform for the aerial ladder, carries the ground ladders and provides storage for other firefighting equipment. Lackore explains that the aerial apparatus must support heavy operational loads from the weight of the personnel and their equipment, water in the plumbing, and reactions from the water nozzle as well as environmental factors such as wind and ice buildup. Safety of the fire fighter and rescue victims is critical. The heavier the load on the aerial device, then, the stronger the platform must be thats carrying it. One of the key elements of the trailer is the gooseneck, the front portion of the trailer that connects the main body to the tractor. When Pierce increased the tip-load capacity of the ladder by 250 lbs, engineers knew that they had to increase the structural strength of the trailer without adding weight. Altairs Noreen Gilbertsen, engineering manager, and Paul Liedtke, senior project engineer, explain that Pierce sent them CAD files that contained the basic shape of the gooseneck device. Pierce engineers knew the length, width and height to fit on the tiller, but they did not know how thick to make the metal parts, says Liedtke. Our job was to figure out how thin to make each plate in the gooseneck assembly to meet their objectives. The challenge was to get the most weight out of the system without compromising the performance of the product. Gilbertsen and Liedtke used Altair HyperMesh to perform the FEA modeling and Altair OptiStruct to analyze and reduce the part's weight. Given the objective of minimizing compliance (maximizing stiffness) while minimizing material used, OptiStruct computed the most efficient load transfer path and

At the Forefront of Innovation

Being innovative in product development while trying to conform to industry standards and meet customers needs is no easy task. According to Pierces Roger Lackore, Implementing new technology provides the greatest opportunity to be innovative. Pierce is no stranger to innovation. Throughout the years, the company has rolled out an array of leading-edge apparatus, including the Arrow custom chassis in 1979 that set the style for modern fire trucks. Its most recent example of innovation is the Side Roll Protection System. According to Pierce, the system senses the exact moment of a side-roll and then provides instantaneous passenger protection. In the event of a vehicle side-roll, the system tightens the seat belts, lowers the front seats to their lowest position, locks the seats down to eliminate movement, pre-tensions the seat belts and deploys a sidecurtain airbag that protects and cushions the heads and necks of the driver and first officer. The system is an industry first and is said to represent a quantum leap forward in fire fighter safety.

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identified where material in the gooseneck could be removed. Specifically, the results allowed the team to eliminate several plates within the original structure that were not providing structural benefit to the design, resulting in a significant weight savings and cost reduction. The team further refined the design by optimizing the gage of the remaining plates to realize additional weight savings. Using the information provided by OptiStruct, Pierce designers were able to create a CAD model of the new gooseneck concept taking into account its manufacturability. Altair engineers then analyzed the final gooseneck design to ensure that stress and displacement were below accepted limits. According to Lackore, We used Altair's analysis software to understand stress in the design phase so we could ensure there would be no problems in our physical testing phase. When Pierce built and tested a physical prototype of the fire apparatus, engineers confirmed that the redesigned gooseneck achieved its weight reduction target and met all specifications.

ured deflections on the frame rails and gooseneck device as the ladder was extended horizontally to its full length and rotated 360. Strain gauges captured measurements in hot spots. The virtual simulation correlated with the physical results, demonstrating that the virtual simulation enabled engineers to meet requirements in the real world.

Extending the Partnership

The product design consulting work Altair performed on the gooseneck project took the collaborative team less than 10 weeks to accomplish. Although neither Altairs Gilbertsen nor Liedtke were familiar with designing fire equipment, physics and creativity know no industry boundaries. According to Lackore, Altair met our expectations. He adds that Pierce was pleased with the consulting part of the operation and found Altair engineers to be a very competent bunch. Using state-of-the-art simulation software also shaved months off the design schedule. Time and cost savings were realized on the redesign of the gooseneck because the up-front work was done virtually using the latest in structural optimization technology. Today, the collaboration between Pierce and Altair continues on proprietary projects. Lackore says, The fire equipment manufacturing business is very competitive. To the degree that you optimize designs through various techniques, including finite-element analysis, you will be ahead of the game. All of our competitors are working within the same set of weight constraints. The smarter we can be, the more our products will continue to stand out.
Beverly A. Beckert is Editorial Director of Concept to Reality Magazine.

The Stiffness Factor

Another key element of the trailer design is the frame structure. This structure provides the integrity needed to balance the forces of the over-hanging ladder load. The tiller trailer needs to be stable at the full load and extension of the ladder. Extending the ladder induces stresses throughout the tractor and tiller that need to be counteracted by a robust design of the trailer structure and tractor frame rails. Lackore relates that the trade-offs are weight verses strength verses stiffness. You want a stiff and strong trailer but with minimum weight to stay within wheel axle capacities. Pierce initially considered using an open-ladder type frame section. This approach, however, did not offer the required torsional stiffness. According to Gilbertsen, the engineering team collaborated to come up with an economical way to prevent twisting on the frame rails: the team employed a box-section approach to successfully achieve the objective. OptiStruct was again utilized to maximize stiffness while minimizing the volume of steel used. OptiStruct results indicated the optimal thickness and location of the steel plates to reduce the torsional deformation of the rails to an acceptable level. In follow-up physical tests, Pierce engineers meas-

While continuing to perform physical tests to validate final designs of its fire trucks, Pierce has increasingly relied on virtual design practices to improve design quality and shrink its new product development time to market.

To receive additional information on HyperMesh or OptiStruct, visit www.altair.com/c2r or check 03 on the reply card.

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