Probabilistic Fatigue Life Prediction of Parabolic Leaf Spring Based on Latin Hypercube Simulation Method

摘要

Fatigue phenomenon is one of the main causes of parabolic leaf spring failure. Therefore, fatigue life assessment and prediction represent an important aspect during parabolic leaf spring design stage. Nevertheless, the estimation of fatigue life is usually affected by many inherent uncertainties which must be considered in a fatigue design approach. In this work, a stochastic approach based on Latin hypercube simulation method has been performed to predict the fatigue life of parabolic leaf spring. The strain based approach and Morrow fatigue criterion have been used to compute the number of cycles to failure. The proposed approach has been applied on a finite element and a response surface model of parabolic leaf spring. The dispersion of geometrical dimensions, materials properties and cyclic loading parameters have been taken into consideration. The number of cycles to failure distribution has been presented and characterized. The effects of probabilistic variables on the fatigue life results have been studied in order to enhance the fatigue behavior of parabolic leaf spring.