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MOTORING MADE SIMPLE
What is a chassis?
Just as how the skeleton provides rigidity and strength to the human body, the chassis of a car or motorcycle performs the job of a frame, which imparts firmness and stability for the vehicle under varying operating conditions. This is the primary function of a chassis and the types and technologies that have been incorporated in developing vehicular chassis over the last few decades have changed based on the demands of consumers (such as increased speed, off-roading and improved safety) and the demands of low cost, mass production.
With the exception of a few super luxury performance cars and a few sports utility vehicles, the chassis of most cars of today are a type that is called steel monocoque. However, there are other types too that were much popular earlier such as the ladder chassis and tubular space frame or roll cage chassis. Current examples of the ladder chassis include the Ford Endeavour and of the tubular space frame chassis includes the Lamborghini Diablo.
The steel monocoque chassis is the most preferred option amongst most car manufacturers simply because of its low cost of production and its extremely good fit with assembly line type, automated production.
What is monocoque construction?
Monocoque, as the name implies, is a one-piece frame that unlike the previous generation of chassis, also incorporates a few of the body panels and parts that give the car its overall form and shape. In the older types of chassis, such as in the ladder and tubular chassis, the individual arms acted as stress members to which the various parts of the car were bolted on. However, in a monocoque chassis, some of the body panels such as the roof, door columns and floor pan are already welded together to form a single unit that is almost immediately reflective of the car's final shape.
However, despite its name, the monocoque chassis is not built out of a single mould, but is actually made by putting together many pieces in an assembly line welding process. The various parts of a monocoque chassis including the roof, the A, C and D pillars, the floor pan and the cross members are all made individually at first by putting sheet metal through a precision stamping process on a series of presses. The stamped components are then spot welded together (either manually or with the help of robots) on an assembly line to form the monocoque chassis. Further, on the assembly line in most modern cars, components such as the doors, bonnet and boot lid, body side panels etc., are added to the monocoque chassis. As such, with high volume production, the monocoque chassis offers the best versatility as regards ease of manufacture.
What are its safety advantages?
In addition to this, the monocoque chassis also offers other advantages such as better passenger protection and enables manufacturers to better cabin safety by allowing inclusion of features such as crumple zones and improved underbody protection. The monocoque chassis is also unbeaten with its ability to maximize space inside the car.
However, on a simplistic weight to strength ratio, the monocoque chassis is less efficient compared to modern ladder chassis and more elaborate tubular chassis. It has too much of sheet metal, which makes it heavy and the same time relatively less strong compared to other two.
Despite its weaknesses, the monocoque chassis is here to stay. Improvements will happen and materials such as aluminium and the more futuristic carbon-fibre may replace some of the steel that goes into current monocoque chassis for mass production cars. Currently, such materials are only being used in luxury cars such as Audi, Mercedes Benz and Lamborghini.
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