Finite Element Analysis Of Vehicle Drive Axle Housing

Automobile lightening is an important means to achieve energy saving andemission reduction. Automobile lightening is essentially part lightening. VehicleDrive Axle Housing is an important shell part which can support automobile loadingweight and transfer load to wheel. The service life of the axle housing directly affectsthe effective life.The traditional design of the axle housing is experience method，which has the defects of long design period，high cost and so on. With thedevelopment of the computer and CAE technology, finite element analysis techniquesare increasingly used in the design and analysis of the axle housing. By taking reardrive axle housing of the light car as the research object, the finite element analysissoftware ANSYS and optimization design theory are used to conduct a comprehensivecheck and analysis on the axle housing to ensure that the axle housing meets therequirements in a variety of complex conditions. Welding temperature field andresidual stress field of vehicle drive axle housing are analyzed based on ANSYS. Thestudies on the influence of welding process for vehicle drive axle housing structureanalysis. These will be have a certain practical value and significance in thedevelopment and production of the axle housing product.The distribution of stress and displacement were obtained by static analysisunder four work conditions.1st to6th natural frequencies were measured throughmodal analysis. Fatigue life and safety factor of the drive axle housing were alsoinvestigated via the fatigue life analysis. According to the FEM calculated results, theoptimized mathematic model was developed and the drive axle housing wascalculated based on GDO to propose a lightweight design. It is shown that the effectsof lightweight design are obvious, as the optimized plan is in accordance with actualwork condition by comparing the FEM check and experimental verification.Welding temperature field is analyzed on drive axle housing. The temperaturedistribution laws for different parts of the axle housing in different time are studied.The effects of different welding parameters (welding current, welding voltage andwelding speed) for welding temperature field of the axle housing are mainly discussed.The influence degree to welding temperature field on three welding parameters isstudied using orthogonal design method. The residual stress field of the axlehousing is analyzed on the basis of the temperature field analysis.