Investigation of the structural behavior of an industrial telescopic fork

During the twentieth century, the increasing number and complexity of the engineering problems made it difficult to find the solutions by using hand calculations. The integration of computers into engineering applications marked a significant human development over the last years and Finite element analysis represent a proved method to solve many types of complicated physics problems using a user-friendly interface. The aim of this thesis is to investigate in depth all the aspects concerning the structural behavior of an industrial telescopic fork, by exploiting the features of a commercial specialized FEM software, LS-DYNA. The telescopic fork, considered in this thesis, belongs to Eurofork S.p.A, an automated material handling company based in Turin/Italy. Initially, a tensile test was conducted on various specimens in order to analyze the material of interest and understand its behavior in both the elastic and plastic regions of deformation. A full version of telescopic fork is later modelled with the FEM software to understand the stress distribution and the most critical zones. Starting from a simplified approach, other phenomena are later taken in account in the model in order to better represent the mechanical behavior. The data collected from the previous analysis enabled a detailed examination of the contact between the roller and raceway, allowing for comparison with analytical solutions. FEM software can accurately characterize contact by providing the resulting stress distribution and determining whether the material undergoes plastic deformation. The final step involve transitioning from the simulated environment to correlating the software results with experimental data obtained from an existing model. All the informations collected in this thesis represents a starting point useful to understand how to use the features of this commercial software to study relevant aspects of the structural design of a telescopic fork. Investigating the static behavior of a telescopic fork, allows designers to make improvements and optimizations to the existing products.