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Automotive OEM's are looking for innovative solutions to capture the possible failure due to warpage and shrinkage of an insert molded part through virtual simulations with help of FEA tools, thereby saving the mold cost, material cost and time. This work demonstrates an approach to study and simulate the failure of an insert molded part which happened after few days of the part molding under idle condition. To simulate the above failure, an innovative approach coupling Moldflow and Abaqus software was derived. First, a flow simulation including phase change of plastic material was carried out with derived parameters, results of which were exported as input to the Abaqus structural solver. Secondly, a thermo-mechanical analysis of the model was then carried out considering the thermal and moisture effect on material property. A good correlation was achieved between the actual failure location and max stress location as predicted by said coupled approach.

The objective of this study is to investigate weight and cost reduction opportunities for a forged steel crankshaft. To optimize the design we need to understand the behavior of the crankshaft when engine is running at high- speed. In past, considerable amount of research effort has gone into the investigation of dynamic characteristics of a spinning shaft with attached discs but there has been less research on the bending behavior of high-speed engine crankshaft. Literature shows that stress and stiffness estimation under static condition is sufficient for engines operating at low-speed but dynamics of crankshaft at high- speed changes stress and stiffness values considerably. Actual engine dynamics simulation and experimental measurement demands huge effort and time. The novelty of this work is to develop simplified testing and simulation methodologies for studying crankshaft behavior in both static and dynamic conditions.