Enhanced fatigue structural stress analysis of a heavy vehicle seam welded steel chassis frame: FEA model preparation, weld model description, fatigue stress calculation and correlation with 10 year operating experience

A FE seam weld model has been built for advanced fatigue structural stress analysis. The shell element model allows both weld toe and weld root fatigue assessment. In order to validate the model, this project deals with the complete analysis of a last decade manufactured vehicle for which experience feedback is possible. The vehicle structure is mainly built with steel sheets and the assembly is performed by seam welding. Shell element model is appropriate for FEA. The entire FEM preparation is presented hereafter and each step is detailed: 3D CAD weld building, mid-surface idealization, weld leg imprint creation, weld mesh connection and load application. Fatigue analysis is performed based on a fatigue limit approach and IIW FAT data. For every structure location a Haigh diagram is built. Different diagrams are presented for plain metal, cut edge, weld toe and weld root. The FEA results are post processed and each appropriate tensor component is taken into account. For plain metal, stress variation along the worst principal stress orientation is calculated. In welds, for both toe and root locations, the structural stress computation based on grid point forces extraction is described. Longitudinal shear stress in weld and at weld toe as well as weld longitudinal normal stress calculations are detailed. Fatigue results are displayed for each location over the whole chassis model. Finally, vehicles built during the last decade are inspected back from the customers experience field. Observed crack types and locations are compared to fatigue analysis predictions.