Structure Lightweight Optimization of Truck Axle on Fatigue Failure

Abstract

Struck axle is a critical component of truck that bears the auto-body weight and load weight. Fatigue life safety is the primary consideration in the design process of axle. With the development of environmental protection concept of energy saving and emission reduction, lightweight design of vehicles becomes more and more urgent. It has been becoming a mainstream trend for design to ensure both safety and significantly reduce the weight of axle. Based on the basic truck axle structure design, revised designs with thickness-reduced were proposed to reduce the weight of truck axle .Both basic and modified design were modeled using Abaqus 3D software to calculate the stress and strain contours in the case of vertical load and axial torque, then fatigue life contours of models for each load case were calculated with the help of Brown-Miner biaxial fatigue theory. It was shown by the research that topology-optimization of truck axle, under a premise of qualified fatigue life and stiffness required by customers, can reduce the weight of two kinds of truck axles by 15.3% and 18.1% respectively.

Toward structure optimization for the mobile vehicle system based on multiconstraints

“…Based on the basic truck axle structure design, Kezhi et al (2018) proposed revised designs with thickness reduced were proposed by to reduce the weight of the truck axle. Both basic and modified designs were modeled using Abaqus 3D software to calculate the stress and strain contours in the case of vertical load and axial torque, then fatigue life contours of models for each load case were calculated with the help of Brown-Miner biaxial fatigue theory.…”