Fatigue performance investigation on the automotive welded structure under damped loads using the Taguchi method.

In the present paper, a three‐dimensional numerical model has been built using ANSYS code to analyze the static and fatigue behavior of a welded design based on four rectangular profiles under damped loads for automotive application. The fatigue of the proposed design is generally influenced by a number of factors. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the load level, the stress ratio, the mean stress theory, the geometry size, the weld bead height, the temperature of the weld bead on the durability (P1), and the maximum of von Mises stress (P2) at the critical areas in the welded structure. As well as the length and the stiffness of the spring have been furtherly investigated. For this purpose, the application of the Taguchi method with computational simulation was performed for the target to determine the optimum operating parameters conditions. The results indicated that the optimum levels yielding a higher performance for P1 and P2 were (L1, L2, L2, L3, L1, L1, L3, and L3) and (L2, L3, L3, L3, L3, L3, L3, and L2), respectively. Thus, it revealed that the weld temperature was the predominant parameter influencing P1 and the mean stress theory factor was the most significant parameter influencing P2. This study led to defining a regression equation relating the output parameters with the selected factors. Consequently, the percentage error between regression equation calculations and computational outputs of fatigue life and maximum von Mises stress corresponding to the most optimal combinations obtained from Taguchi calculations was 0.92% and 0.63%, respectively. In fact, several parameters have been employed in this durability assessment to characterize the behavior of welded rectangular profiles prototype to predict the overall behavior of the suspension system of the automotive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]