Development of a Cornering Bench Fatigue Test for the Validation of a Lightweight Commercial Vehicle Front Hub

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TECHNICAL ARTICLE—PEER-REVIEWED

Development of a Cornering Bench Fatigue Test for the Validation of a Lightweight Commercial Vehicle Front Hub Kemal Gulbudak • Pasa Yayla • A. Yesim Yayla

Submitted: 21 November 2010 / in revised form: 2 April 2011 / Published online: 21 April 2011  ASM International 2011

Abstract Laboratory testing to validate the performance of vehicle components is a common practice in the automotive market. However, during standard bench testing of a commercial front wheel hub, several failures occurred in unexpected regions indicating an inconsistency with the vehicle cornering tests. This article addresses this inconsistency and presents methods for fatigue assessment using an accelerated rig (bench) test for a lightweight commercial vehicle front wheel hub. A complete cornering (figure of eight) vehicle test is modeled on a multi-body dynamic simulation system (ADAMS/Chassis) and the results are compared with the actual data obtained from the hub of a vehicle instrumented with a set of wheel force transducers. The multi-axial loading condition is successfully simplified due to the dominance of some stress components. Load data from the simulation are processed with the rain flow cycle counting algorithm. Critical locations on the C55 steel hub are determined with the stress analysis done on ANSYS (ANSYS Theory Reference: Release 10.0, 2005). Total damage is estimated by using the Palmgren–Miner linear damage summation rule. Finally, some validation test results are consistent with vehicle tests and may be used to substitute performance. K. Gulbudak General Electric Marmara Technology Center, Tubitak Gebze Kocaeli, Turkey P. Yayla (&) Mechanical Engineering Department, Kocaeli University, Engineering Faculty, Kocaeli, Turkey e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] A. Y. Yayla Mechanical Education Department, Marmara University, Technical Education Faculty, Goztepe, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected]

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Keywords Fatigue life  Automotive design  Automotive failures  Vehicle failures

Introduction Today’s competitive environment forces automotive market constructers to decrease the model launching time and consequently shorten the time needed to validate new designs. Although, there are some standard test routines for suspension parts [1, 2], every automotive company has their own design and validation procedure. Customercorrelated performance or durability tests are used to generate entire lifetime loads acting on the components. Front suspension units and axles are subjected to substantial bending moments examined under cornering tests which simply take the component through the motions associated with a vehicle moving through a figure of eight. Prototype vehicle preparation, measurements, the testing equipment, spare parts, arranging for drivers and technical personnel required to conduct the test consume time and funding. Bench fatigue testing is believed to be a costeffective way to evaluate the durability of automotive suspension components. This article describes