Lightweight Design Of New Automobile Axle Housing Parts

Automobile lightweight is to reduce the weight of the whole vehicle or parts to increase the driving power on the basis of ensuring the safety of the vehicle.It can achieve the goal of reducing fuel consumption and achieving energy conservation and emission reduction.Especially after the "carbon peak" and "carbon neutral" were proposed,the demand for automobile energy conservation and emission reduction became more urgent.All major automobile manufacturers have encouraged the innovation of automobile lightweight technology to promote the progress and development of lightweight technology.As an important part of the vehicle chassis,the weight of the automobile drive axle housing accounts for a large proportion of the vehicle mass,so the research on its lightweight is of great significance.In this paper,the drive axle housing of Dongfeng K6-N light truck is taken as the research object,and DP580 is used to replace the original Q345 as the axle housing material.The strength,stiffness,modal characteristics,fatigue life and other properties of the axle housing made of two different materials are analyzed and calculated respectively.On this basis,the lightweight optimization design research is carried out,and finally the structural lightweight of the drive axle housing selected based on higher strength materials is realized,It lays the material and structure foundation for the lightweight of the axle housing studied.The main research contents include:(1)Material selection and mechanical and fatigue performance test of drive axle housing.Through investigation and analysis,DP580 dual phase steel was selected to replace the traditional Q345 steel as the axle housing material,and unidirectional tension and fatigue tests of DP580 plate were carried out to obtain the material stress-strain curve and fatigue S-N curve,which laid a material model foundation for finite element simulation.(2)Strength,stiffness and modal analysis of drive axle housing.The finite element analysis of the strength and stiffness of the bridge shell made of Q345 and DP580 materials under four typical service conditions is carried out,and then the modal analysis of the bridge shell made of the two materials is carried out by using the Lanczos eigenvalue solving machine.The results show that DP580 material meets the requirements of strength and stiffness under all working conditions,without resonance.(3)Fatigue life analysis of drive axle housing.The S-N nominal stress method is used to analyze the fatigue life of the axle housing made of Q345 and DP580 materials.The simulation results show that the fatigue life of DP580 axle housing is much higher than Q345,which verifies that its fatigue life meets the requirements,and also provides a good space for weight reduction.(4)Optimization of axle housing structure based on material selection.The overall thinning and topology optimization design of DP580 axle housing were carried out to achieve the optimization of part structure and weight reduction of parts on the premise of meeting the strength,stiffness and fatigue.To sum up,based on DP580 dual phase steel replacing traditional Q345 steel as the axle housing material,with reasonable structural optimization design,the weight reduction of the axle housing can be achieved under four typical working conditions and the requirements of strength,stiffness and fatigue life.The results show that DP580 dual phase steel can be used as the material of the axle housing under study.