The Twist Beam Rear Axle Design And Structure Performance Simulation

With the development of economy and transportation system, the demand for the car is rapidly increased in China. In the meantime, the drivers are increasingly intense to the performance of the car. This requires vehicle manufacturers must improve not only the capacity of produce but also the performance of the car. With this background, many Chinese vehicle manufacturers have started new projects to research and develop new vehicles to meet the new requirements from the users. As a role part of the vehicle chassis system, the twist beam rear axle has a significant influence on vehicle driving safety and drive performance. So the twist beam rear axle is one of the most important parts that the manufactures are focus on research and development.This paper carries out detailed study on the twist beam rear axle design process and structural performance simulation base on the project that our company designed a twist beam rear axle for a well-known domestic vehicle manufacturer. Firstly, according to the design inputs and performance requirements the product is designed with the software of CATIA. Secondly, based on the finite element theory the stiffness are calculated by the CAE software and strength are calculated based on the typical dangerous load condition. Meanwhile the twist beam rear axle fatigue life prediction is analyzed base on the Miner fatigue cumulative damage theory. After a detail study on the simulation result the weak areas of the designed twist beam rear axle are found out and base on these result proposals are made to improve the performance of the twist beam rear axle. After the change of the design the CAE simulation need to be done again to get confirmed that the new twist beam rear axle can achieve the performance target. Finally the samples are produced in prototype shop and using these samples the durability test on rig are done to verify the reliability of the design.In this paper, the twist beam rear axle design and simulation analysis are described in detail, and the method of component design and CAE simulation provide a good reference for automotive chassis component designer.