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Research Paper | Mechanical Engineering | India | Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2014

Stiffness Calculation of Car Camber Link to Improve the Buckling Strength

Narasimhamurthy ^[4] | Dr. Satish Babu

Abstract: The project is based on the stiffness of the camber link. Camber link plays vital role in suspension and steering system of the car. The main aim of the project is improve the stiffness and decrease the mass of camber link. Since camber link is subjected to different loads; like compression and tensile; it has to sustain that load without any deflection. In order to achieve this; the camber link must have sufficient stiffness. To increase stiffness different design iterations are carried out in this project. Another important aspect related to designing a new car is mass of the camber link. The camber link mass also adds to the whole weight of car. It adversely effects on the fuel consumption and decreases the fuel efficiency. Also it causes air pollution due to increasing mass. In this project the mass of camber link is decreased by replacing steel alloy material with the light weight aluminum alloy material. The experimental and theoretical analysis was carried out to determine the displacement; stiffness and buckling load of camber link. In preprocessing stage CATIA V5 and HYPERMESH softwares were used to model and to mesh the model. In processing stage ABAQUS software was used as solver and post processing HYPERVEIW software was used to view the result. In this project the theoretical stress; displacement; stiffness and buckling loads were found to be in good agreement with the numerical values for steel alloy. Numerically four design iterations were carried out and finally best were selected among the four cases; by considering displacement; stress; natural frequency; mass; stiffness and buckling load. After selection of best case change the steel alloy material with the aluminum alloy material to decrease the mass of the link. Finally aluminum alloy camber link mass was 35 % that of the steel alloy link mass. The fatigue analysis was carried out to selected steel alloy camber link; aluminum alloy camber link and existed or original steel alloy camber link to determine damage and life repeats by using nCode software. The selected camber links from design iterations was found to be less damage and high life repeats than the existed or original steel alloy camber link.

Keywords: Camber link, stiffness, mass, buckling, fatigue

Edition: Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2014,

Pages: 2681 - 2689

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