Development of methodology for accelerated validation of axle components in relation to static load capacity

The Indian automotive industry is striving towards more safe and durable vehicles. A need was felt to study the effect of changes in axle static loads on fatigue life of the axle components. Also, there was a need to develop generic test method, as there are no test standards or generic methods available in public domain for fatigue testing of commercial vehicle axles. The study was carried out to check direct effect of change in axle loads on various connections on axle, effect of suspension configuration and force distribution, Vehicle dynamics, etc. In this paper, an India specific generic load spectra was evaluated for accelerated laboratory validation. Paper discusses the methodology as; study of heavy commercial vehicle systems, road load data collection on identified test vehicles w.r.t. test matrix finalised, India specific test loads & load spectra development, Normalisation of axle load spectra w.r.t to static axle weights and arriving at test guidelines. Comprehensive experiments and load measurements were carried out on test vehicles to arrive at a generic test methodology and test cycles. The derived test specifications were correlated with current industry practices and the actual in-lab experiments were conducted.