Fatigue life prediction is critical to assure the safety and reliability of automotive bushings. Bushings are usually made of rubber type materials that act as cushions between rigid members and are often of complex shape. The stiffness characteristic of the bushings is sensitive to the multi-body dynamics, noise and vibration of a vehicle. Given that an experimental program to evaluate bushing performance may cost between 20k to \\\$200k USD, developing a durable automotive bushing can be challenging. In this paper, fatigue life prediction methodologies provided by fe-safe/Rubber combining with finite element analyses, and optimization methods were utilized to develop a durable automotive bushing made of natural rubber. The proposed geometric design of the automotive bushing was obtained by a parametric optimization with the use of Abaqus finite element analyses ensuring the stiffness compliances in multiple loading directions. This procedure was automated by the process automation capability of Isight. The stresses and strains at critical locations from the finite element analysis of the proposed geometric design were then incorporated with the surface algorithm in fe-safe/Rubber enforcing a plane stress condition and the Lake-Lindley fatigue model. The fatigue life prediction was driven iteratively by the Tosca non-parametric optimization in order to find the more durable designs.

Find the presentation from our User Group Meeting below

Recording of SIMULIA Expert Simulation Consultant, Jaehwan CHOI, Ph.D.:

PDF slides:

Example Model Files (Abaqus, fe-safe, Isight and Tosca 2016):