Fatigue Analysis of Front Axle for Automobile Heavy Motor Vehicle

The axles in a system must bear the weight of the vehicle as well as any cargo weight. The front axle beam is one of the major parts of vehicle suspension system and it houses the steering assembly as well. About 35 to 40 percent of the total vehicle weight is taken up by the front axle. Corrosion, wear and fatigue are the main causes of failure of mechanical parts. Main failure form of front axle beam is fatigue damage. The axles serve to transmit driving torque to the wheel, as well as to maintain the position of the wheels relative to each other and to the vehicle body. Therefore, the research on the fatigue life has important value. So, proper design and optimization of front axle is extremely crucial to Fatigue strength. The paper focuses on design, analysis and optimization of front axle. The approach in this research paper has been divided into two steps. The First step involves design of front axle by Analytical method. For this, types of forces loads with the help of CAD UNIGRAPHICS NX9.Second step involved further Pre-processing using ANSYS bench work 15.0 and post processing with the help of ANSYS bench work NCODE. Also the experimentation test performed and compared with FEA results.