PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT AND DESIGN/ANALYSIS OF A COMPOSITE CAB OF A LIGHT OFF-ROAD VEHICLE Gligorce Vrtanoski 1 , Vladimir Dukovski 1 , Ljuben Dudeski 1 1 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University "Ss Ciril and Methodius" Skopje Karpos II b.b. P.O. Box 464, 91000 Skopje, Republic of Macedonia E-mail: gliso@ereb.mf.ukim.edu.mk SUMMARY: The paper presents the main aspects concerning the prototype development of a composite cab of a light off-road vehicle intended to serve a vary wide variety of functions. The selection of composite structure mechanical properties is the most important activity in the development of composite material body. For that purpose several different composite structures used for composite material body production have been examined. The obtained results from mechanical tests were compared with the identical composite structures presented in the literature. The light off-road vehicle is modeled using Integrated CAD/CAM/CAE system for developing structures with composite materials. Some results of large static and dynamical investigation are presented. KEYWORDS: Composite Cab, Composite Material Body, Light Off-Road Vehicle, Composite Structures, Modeling of Light Off-Road Vehicle, Structural Analysis. INTRODUCTION Application of composite materials in production of vehicle bodies is the largest substitution of sheet metal in automobile industry. The idea to produce composite material body in only one part comes as a result of mechanical properties of composites. Sheet metal bodies are manufactured of many parts produced by expensive tools/dies and processes justified only in mass production. The cost of molds for manufacturing composite material bodies is much less, but production technology is limited, slow and with a great involvement of manual work, which justify the use of composite material technology in small and medium size production. Integrated CAD/CAM/CAE system for vehicle with composite material body has been developed [3,1,2,] for modeling, analysis and production of structures with composite materials. The concept has been implemented using commercially available software (AutoCAD, 3D Studio, ALGOR) for personal computers, integrated with standard data exchange formats (DXF) and originally developed interfaces [3]. As a result of this concept we have drastically shortened the overall development process and improved quality of design, production and presentation of the product with relatively small investments in hardware and software.