ahh ok..as an engineer myself i know exactly what your talking about
...thanks for clarifying...
Kevin
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Originally Posted by carnutz
Well Kevin, let me try to clarify a little. I am a structural engineer and design steel structures for a living (and post on forums for fun ) but my structures do not move. I was just trying to point out that people were talking about attaching steel tubes to the HL "frame" which is a misnomer since the HL is a unibody structure and the body curves and bends and stiffening elements are the "frame" so there is no seperate frame like in a 4Run'r.
You are correct that boxing a truck frame will add to the stiffness and strength and placing an X member between the frame rails will add stiffness and strength in the plane of the frame rails, but in the vertical plane the increase will be much smaller. If you add the step tube to a truck frame and only connect at the end of the step, the extra stiffness will be limited by the ability of the step tube to resist bending moments in the frame rails where they are connected. However if there is a web between the step tube and the frame rail which is welded continuously between the two, then the frame stiffness (moment of inertia) will be increased. (Same effect as boxing a channel) Torsional stiffness is not much improved by boxing a channel truck frame and adding cross members unless they include a lot of diagonal members to tie the 2 longitudinal members together.
To accomplish this stiffening in a unibody, you would have to gut the interior and add a lot of tubes and make the HL look like a World Rally Car. Welding the doors shut would also help.
I guess my main point was that bolting a thin wall tube to some attachment points on a HL will not improve the flatness of the cornering. |