Having an interest in FEA applications, I contacted Prof. Sudip B., currently working as a Vehicle Crashworthiness Engineer at Ford Motor Company. I am very grateful to him for taking the time out to find an interesting and challenging project for me to pursue.
The steering knuckle is one of the most important parts of the modern vehicle. It connects the steering, suspension & brake system to the automotive chassis and the wheel. The top two mounts are for the Strut connection, the two at the back are for the brake mount, the lower one for the Lower Control Arms, and the last one for the steering system. I assumed that the load per wheel of the vehicle is 200kg and considered Lateral force (=3*Acceleration due to gravity(G)), Bump force (3G), Brake Force (3G) and Moment (1.5G).
Step 1: Model the Steering Knuckle
I followed this tutorial on YouTube to make the Steering Knuckle file. Here's a rendered image of the final Part File.
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| Steering Knuckle Drawing |
Step 2: Load the Model into Ansys and verify geometry using Spaceclaim.
Material: Aluminum 2011-T3 Alloy (Young’s modulus: 7.38e10, Pa and Poisson’s ratio: 0.337)
Assign the Fixed Support Points.
Apply Forces and Constraints.
Generate a mesh for the solid & refine the mesh in areas with contacts and forces for higher accuracy.
Step 3: Result and Analysis
Here, from the stress Plot, we find that the maximum stress is 121.89MPa which is lesser than the Yield Strength of the material, thus the material is safe for the choice of loading. Deflection is negligible at 0.2mm.
Step 4: Verification of Result
Calculating the maximum stress using hand-calculation, using the stress (Sigma = MY/Ixx) and torsion (Tau = Moment*thickness*RadialArm / Polar Moment of Inertia) formulae, the hand calculation result was 0.006GPa less. Thus, we can reliably use the model.
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