Automotive Drive Axle Housing Based On The Finite Element Method Analysis

Drive axle housing is one of the main components of a vehicle, its performances directly affect the vehicle's safety and reliability, well-designed housing should have good static, dynamic performances and sufficient fatigue life. By using CAE technology, the drive axle housing of a medium truck is analyzed in this paper to obtain the mechanical properties and optimize the design.According to the product drawing, the geometric model is established with CATIA, after the geometric model is simplified and modified, the finite element model is established with HyperMesh. Reference to the relevant test standard, the static bench test for drive axle housing is simulated, the simulated results are compared with experimental results, the stiffness and static strength can meet the requirements; then the risk cross-sections for typical operating conditions are calculated in theory and analyzed by finite element simulating, the results have a good coherence, the maximum stress under any condition is less than the allowable stress of the material, the strength can meet the requirements.In order to understand the dynamic performance of the drive axle housing, the free modal analysis is carried out to obtain the natural frequencies and mode vibration shapes. The first six natural frequencies are much larger than the surface excitation frequency range 0-50Hz, it will not cause the sympathetic vibration.With the consideration of the factors which affect the fatigue life, the drive axle housing S-N curve is established, according to the standard the fatigue bench test is simulated; through the establishment of multi-body dynamics model of the vehicle, the road roughness is taken as input to obtain the random load time history at spring seats, then the drive axle housing fatigue life under random load is analyzed. The fatigue life both in the bench test simulation and under random load is low.Based on the above analysis, the structure of drive axle housing should be optimized in order to improve its fatigue life. According to the results of size and free size optimizations and in consideration of the lightweight, the structure is improved by the way of reinforcing the local, the analysis results show that the improved structure can meet the bench test requirements and has a good improvement result.