Over 120 years of car history, many technical solutions appeared: some of them disappeared in a few years, others have been accepted and implemented by manufacturers.
This is a brief overview of developments in the automotive body and frame, following industry trends and introduces some interesting solutions on prototype or production cars: even with some success in the market, they contained all the strange ideas and should be considered in the design of innovative structures.
From the origin to the 1920s :
The birth of the car was made possible by the development of internal combustion engines. So, engineers had to deal with new practical problems, such as steering and braking systems for cars.
In this phase, the construction of a supporting frame for the body and the mechanical components are considered of secondary importance: there was no need for strictest requirements in terms of weight and stiffness, due to the limited power of the engines.
While the engineers had no prior experience with brakes, transmissions and steering systems, the body and chassis they could use the know-how developed for horse buses.
In the late 19th century, had the first car coaches, which are adapted to the combustion engine propulsion. Although the body
terminology (Phaeton, tonneau, Landauer, rockaway) were taken from the coaches world.
The structures were made of a wooden frame with wooden body panels mounted on it.
The limited power and maximum speed activated these structures to easily stand for static and dynamic loads.
In 1900 with the introduction of steel and aluminum sheets and the development of drop-hammering and electric hammers manufacturing processes there was a revolution in the perception of the body's structure: the wood panels, straight or bent in very simple curves using steam pretreatment, was replaced by sheet metal panels.
This allowed designers to create shapes with more freedom. The body parts made mainly of steel, but for the more luxurious cars, they were built with aluminum plates. These body parts were mounted on conventional wooden frame, reinforced at several stressed nodes with steel components.
This type of structure (sheet metal body on a wooden frame) was the most common for about ten years until the 1910th
In 1915 HJHayes introduced a new solution: a body with structural functionality, with advantages in terms of lower costs and reduce noise and vibration.
This structure was adopted at the Ruler Frameless, a limited series of cars built in 3000 units.
In this car the body parts had a tubular shape and provided the necessary rigidity, while the engine and suspensions were mounted on a horizontal floor-pan.
In the same year, Edward G. Budd suggested a car made entirely of steel: The original idea was steel shells welded together. Anyway, stamping technology at that time was not very sophisticated and did not allow to form sheets with complex curves, as many reinforcing members and a high number of welds were required.
Anyway Budd's idea was the foundation for the future development of the steel anybody. This solution was used on Dodge Brothers (1914), the first large quantities (thousands of units) all-steel car.
In 1922 Lancia Lambda was a revolution in the development of chassis design. It was created by Vincenza Lancia, which took its inspiration from the monocoque structure of both.
With Lambda for the first time the structural issues of both body and frame were a common solution.
Lambda's structure was entirely made of steel. Floor pan covered transmissions tunnel and the bearing body made of a "skeleton", which is covered by sheet steel panels that gave their contribution to overall stiffness.
Meanwhile presented
Source: http://articles.besttofind.com/a-2903/autos/cars/automobile-body-and-chassis.html
