Lightweight Optimization Study On 1141 Heavy Truck Driving Axle Housing

As the mainly carrying and passing components of the vehicle, the automobile drive axle housing supports the weight of vehicle, and transfer the weight to the wheel. Through the drive axle housing, the tractive force, braking force and lateral force act on the wheel transfer to the suspension system, frame or carnage. So the performance of automobile drive axle housing structure affects whether the automobile design is successful or not. With the rapid development of automobile industry the performance request becomes stricter and stricter, which makes conventional calculation methods of design can't meet the needs of modern automobile design. The appearance of computers and the development of finite element method bring on a new revolution about the calculation and analysis of automobile drive axle housing structure. Using finite element method to analyze automobile drive axle housing structure and taking it optimization into account make sense in improving automobile performance, reducing the cost of design and manufacture of cars and increasing capability of market competition.The emphasis of this paper is combined with a vehicle's drive axle and the actual model, the current energy crisis and the continuous development of lightweight design, made of lightweight drive axle housing to the research objectives. It is based on FEM static and dynamic theory, the 3D model of the drive axle housing is established in the CATIA on the basis of this model, the FEA is simulated in computer under the circumstance of HYPERMESH to get the results of stress distribution, deformation and the first eleven natural frequency and vibration shape under the free constraint. The results shows the axle housing meets the strength demand, it is reliable under all kinds of driving conditions and can't cause resonance of the housing, then based on the FEA, to optimize the housing by using of HYPERMESH. As the result indicates that the weight of the axle housing is reduced remarkably and the maximum stress in housing approaches its breaking-point which boost the utilization of the material, and the stress distributes reasonably. It is a universal analytical means which could be applied to any other kind of axle housing.