Prognosis of the fatigue life of the formed metal bellows accumulator

摘要

Formed bellows accumulators have been mass produced for pulse absorbers of the vehicle active suspension systems since 1989, because of the features of no-gas-leakage and high-frequency-response. By these days' needs, pursuing more intensive space efficiency, we began to design it so that some modes of input pressure may be in the range beyond the fatigue limit of the bellows. On the other hand, we must make it clear that how the accumulator gets damaged by using within the range beyond the fatigue limit.In this report, we present a sample analysis and prognosis of the fatigue life of our accumulator. The prognosis is based on precise prediction of the system life and the Miner's law. We can apply this method to design accumulators for automobile partswhich we must guarantee the fatigue life for the entire period of the system life.