Structure Analysis And Lightweight Optimization Study On CA1091Type Heavy Truck Driving Axle Housing

Driving axle housing is one of the car’s main bearing carrier, at the same time, it is also the assembly of main reduction gear, differential, semiaxis and so on, its main role is to support the automobile quality, and transmit the force and moment between frame and the wheel through the suspension. In the course of driving car, driving axle housing bears a complicated load, and it has a higher demand of the strength, stiffness and fatigue life.At the same time, the total quality of a divided axle, wheel strive, brake and brake drum, accounts for about3.5%-5%of the vehicle’s total weight of, and the proportion is greater for heavy duty truck. Furthermore the quality of the drive axle depends largely on the structure of axle housing, so reducing the quality of drive axle housing is one of the most important ways for truck lightweight. As a result, under the premise of keeping the balance between weight, cost and function, guaranteeing vehicle’s fatigue durability and not reducing vehicle’s performance, doing structure analysis and lightweight design for driving axle housing, it has a important significance to improve the vehicle’s performance, energy conservation and emission reduction, reduce unsprung mass, lessen manufacturing’s cost, improve ride of the automobile and so on.The research object of this paper is CA1091type load truck’s driving axle housing, according to the survey, the drive axle housing rarely appears fatigue fracture in service period, therefore, the structural’s strength and stiffness are likely to appear redundancy phenomenon, and failed to make full use of the material and result in wasted. In this paper, under the premise of meeting the strength, stiffness and life’s requirements, it conducts the light quantitative research of drive axle housing, the main research contents are as follows:(1) This paper builds drive axle housing three-dimensional model by using UG software, then simplifies it and imports it into ANSYS software, and builds the finite element model. Under four working conditions, it conducts the static analysis of drive axle housing by using ANSYS software. Stress and strain is the largest under the condition of the biggest driving force, and the three dangerous point positions including the place nearby spring seat, the transition parts of axle housing body, and the variable cross-section place of semi-axis and so on.(2) By using ANSYS software to axle housing with free modal and constrained modal analysis, it is concluded that the lowest natural frequency value of axle housing is beyond the range of the road incentive (0-50Hz) in the two cases. The analysis results indicate that axle housing will not produce resonance due to pavement incentive, and axle’s structure design is reasonable.(3) Using the fatigue module of ANSYS software, it conducts fatigue life calculation for the risk area of axle housing of the based on the analysis of the structure, the main service environment of the axle housing is relatively poor mining area’s road, and the load is fluctuating load. The calculation results show that the lowest life of axle housing is far more than the national requirements of median fatigue800000times(when the survival rate is50%)and low fatigue500000times (when the survival rate is99.9%).(4) It conducts structure optimization for the axle housing by using the optimization module of ANSYS software, and the optimization results show that the its quality reduces18.13%, the stress and strain of the optimized model distribute reasonable and meet the requirement of design. It shows that the optimization scheme is feasible.This paper conducts structure analysis and lightweight optimization research to axle housing by using the finite element method, and the results show that the axle housing’s weight loss effect is obvious, then it checks the optimized model, and the results show that the axle housing, which is mentioned as above, meets requirements of strength, stiffness and fatigue life. At the same time reducing axle housing’s weight means to reduce the sprung mass, and that reduces the vehicle’s vibration frequency, improves the frequency of the wheel when it jumps up and down, and these is of important significance for improving the harshness, comfort and controllability of the vehicle.