Teaching Durability in Automotive Applications Using a Reliability Approach

Fatigue phenomena, which appear generally below the yield stress, is the cause of more than 80 % of in-service mechanical failures. However, the optimization of the weight and cost when designing mechanical components or structures, linked to improved performance, leads to increasingly stressed components. Therefore a fatigue design approach must be done by the engineer. This paper shows the experience gained over five academic years of teaching fatigue the assessment of automotive components using a reliability approach to predict probability of failure, in the engineering school, Arts et Métiers ParisTech, in France. The choice was made to present a comprehensive fatigue assessment approach using a method, initially developed in the automotive industry and since extended to the aeronautical and mechanical industries. This method is known as the “Stress-Strength interference analysis”. The “Stress” represents the distribution of the driver severity, and the “Strength” represents the distribution of the fatigue strength of all the components. A suspension arm is used to illustrate the approach. The Dang Van multiaxial fatigue criterion is implemented in a Finite Elements Code and a danger coefficient is visualized on the meshed structure. The fatigue analysis is interpreted with respect to the target reliability sought by the carmanufacturer.