Abstract:

The fatigue life behavior of the pivotal load carrying structure of the air suspension system, the equalizing beam in a heavyduty truck was investigated. A typical endurance virtual digital road surface of the test ground was built in the ADAMS environment. The dynamic loads of the weak points of the beam under vehicle driving state were obtained with the simulation of the vehicle on the virtual test road. The fatigue damage of the beam was calculated by the software LMSTecWare, and was compared with the experimental results of real vehicle. The results show that the simulated distribution tendency of the cumulative fatigue damage of the beam coincide with the road test result very well. The proposed simulation method is successful to predict the fatigue life in the early stage of vehicle pivotal structure design, being of help to reduce the development period and cost of the new product.

Key words: vehicle engineering, digital test ground, fatigue life, load carrying structure, rainflow counting method, dynamic load