Accelerated durability assessment of motorcycle components in real-time simulation testing

Abstract

The rapid development of the vehicle industry has made reducing product development time a major concern. This study seeks to identify a suitable accelerated approach to durability analysis for motorcycle components. This investigation involves field data acquisition, laboratory road load simulation, accelerated durability testing, and fatigue life prediction. Two methods, ‘strain range editing technique’ and ‘racetrack editing technique’, were applied to edit field strain histories for accelerated durability tests. Furthermore, four methods, including the ‘S–N approach with fatigue property of base metal’, ‘Eurocode 3 approach’, ‘BS 5400 approach’, and ‘BS 5400 approach with Gurney thickness modification’, were employed to assess fatigue life. Three road types and four damage levels were also used. The results demonstrated that the ‘BS 5400 approach with Gurney thickness modification’ is a suitable method of assessing the durability of welded motorcycle components when the fatigue properties of critical points are not available. Both the ‘strain range editing technique’ and ‘racetrack editing technique’ can effectively edit strain histories with the expected quantity of fatigue damage, and demonstrate satisfactory agreement between the experimental data and predicted data.