FEA and The Design of Lighter Bus Bodies

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was first developed in 1943. This concept illustrates and allows assembling of tiny parts, section by section over a huge structure. This is how we make our buses.

Initially, FEA was limited to expensive mainframe computers, owned by large corporations. But since the rapid decline in the cost of computers and the phenomenal increase in computing power, FEA has been developed and is affordable by us.

FEA is a tool that all bus manufacturers could use. The essence is that buses in Kenya have been built to withstand anything over a long period of time, which has forced the user to carry around huge excess structural weight, and pay for it. It has also had the effect of increasing the all up weight of the big buses to well over what the law permits, leading to descruction of roads not designed to handle it.

FEA has become a solution to the task of predicting failure to stresses by showing problem areas in a material and allowing designers to see all the theoretical stresses within. This method of product design and testing is far valuable to saving manufacturing costs which would accrue if each sample was actually built and testing.

This is the future of Bus Body Building, and KVM is doing it.