Stiffness And Fatigue Life Study Of The Steering Wheel Framework

As one of the most important subsystems of the vehicle, the performance of the steering system is very important for vehicle performance. The steering wheel is an important part of the steering system. As the bearing part of the steering wheel, the design of the steering wheel framework needs to meet a variety of performance requirements. Among them, the stiffness and fatigue life are the basic and most important performance requirements.In this paper, with the combination of an automobile company’s mini vehicle development projects, the finite element method is used to study the stiffness and fatigue life of the steering wheel framework. The content of research work in this paper mainly includes:(1) The accurate three-dimensional geometric models of two programs of the steering wheel framework are established by the use of a3D modeling software UG (Unigraphics), respectively as the initial program and the improved program. The finite element model of two programs of the steering wheel framework are established by a professional pre-processing software Hypermesh10.0.(2) A simple stiffness condition is refined by considering various performance requirements. Abaqus6.8is used to calculate the stiffness condition, and the simulating compression curves of the two programs of the steering wheel framework are obtained. Universal testing machine is used for the stiffness test of the steering wheel, and the test compression curves of the two programs of the steering wheel framework are obtained, and compared with the simulating compression curves, and compared with the standard curves as well. The results showed that:the initial program has a too large stiffness performance, and the improved program has a moderate stiffness performance.(3) MSC.Nastran is used to calculate the fatigue stress of the bending condition of the steering wheel framework, and MSC.Fatigue is used to calculate the bending fatigue life. A professional vehicle steering wheel fatigue testing machine is used to test the bending fatigue life of the steering wheel, and compared with the simulating result. The results showed that:Synthesize the stiffness performance and the fatigue life, although the fatigue life of the improved program of the steering wheel framework is much larger than the actual engineering requirements, the security performance is not good; although the fatigue life of the initial program is much shorter, the security performance can still meet the actual engineering requirements. So, the improved program is better.(4) Synthesize the stiffness performance and the fatigue life, the improved program of the steering wheel framework is better.