Fatigue life evaluation of an electrically driven shuttle frame using finite element analysis

Abstract

Abstract This article provides the fatigue life estimation of the frame of a new electrically powered shuttle used in airports and resorts. The frame and components of the electrically powered shuttle were designed by expert employers of the OSCAR Co. using a CATIA computer program. Accelerometers were mounted under and above the prototype electric vehicle frame and external load path interaction data were collected by road tests. By means of five varied degrees of road roughness and three different conditions for vehicle loading, the raw road data were recorded via accelerometers on the vehicle frame. The recorded raw data was made available by processing with the FDesign program. After the external load was determined, a 3D drawing of the frame of the vehicle was transferred to the ANSYS program as a step file. In the chassis model transferred to the ANSYS program; material assignment, meshing of the frame structure, defining the boundary conditions of the structure and static analysis were determined according to the most critical road load, following which fatigue analyses were performed for five different roads. The fatigue life and damage amount of each road on the vehicle frame were calculated separately by considering Miner’s rule according to the S-N high cycle method. Experiments showed that no fatigue damage occurred within the predicted 200,000 km.