Finite Element Analysis And Improvement Of The Automobile Drive Axle Housing Based On Collaborative Simulation Environment

As a main part of cars, drive axle housing supports the automobile chassis andthe carriage, passes weights to the wheels. Meanwhile, the vertical force, traction,braking force acting on the drive wheels are also passed to the suspension and theframe though the axle housing; therefore, it is playing as both loading part andtransmission part. Because the axle is used frequently under complex conditions, theirquality and property directly affect the overall performance of the vehicle and its usedlife, so the drive axle housing must have characteristics of sufficient strength, stiffnessand good dynamic. Currently the traditional method has been difficult to meet therequirements of drive axle housing, while because of its many advantages; the finiteelement method becomes an effective way to solve the problem.This paper makes finite element analysis for drive axle housing based on thecollaborative simulation environment of Solidworks and ANSYS Workbench. Due tofailures and faults in using some this type drive axle. The structural and modalanalyses should be made to decide whether its stiffness, strength and modality are inaccordance with the relevant requirements or not. In the structural analysis on thedrive axle housing, the analysis model is not the axle housing itself; it also containsthe steel plate springs, Leaf-spring seat, and main reducer shell and so on in order toimprove the precision and accuracy of the analysis.The main contents of the paper are: structural analysis and modal theory of driveaxle housing; Modeling, assembling and simplifying on the drive axle, leaf spring,spring seat and the main reducer shell by using Solidworks; Importing the solid modelinto ANSYS Workbench though seamless connectivity technology, analyzing staticstructural after setting material properties, the mesh size, mesh element types,constraints, and the load; Contrasting with bridges hell analysis and traditional singleaxle of components with leaf spring assembly; free modal analysis of the drive axlehousing; combining static structural analysis with modal analysis results, improvingmodel of drive axle; through comparing the mechanical properties before and afterimprovement model, the feasibility of the improved model is confirmed.The finite element analysis results show that: bridges hell analysis and traditionalsingle axle of components with leaf spring assembly is closer to the measured value;strength and stiffness of improved the rear drive axle all meet the requirements, andfit with dynamic design standard; the strength and stiffness of improved the axle(maximum stress of the axle housing, the highest increase of42.64%, a minimum of21.73%and20.31%, the maximum decrease of the maximum strain of the axlehousing, a minimum of13.28%) are all increased, and the influence of stressconcentration is reduced.Key Words: Drive axle housing, Leaf spring, Collaborative Simulation, ANSYS...