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In an automobile, road loads due to tire-road interaction are transferred to vehicle body through suspension. This makes suspension a critical component from the body durability perspective. During vehicle design and development, optimization of suspension parameters to suit ride and handling performance is a continuous and iterative process. These changes on suspension can affect vehicle body durability performance. This paper tries to establish a process to evaluate the effect of changes in suspension parameters on body durability, thus helping in understanding the impact of these changes. The process starts with virtual model building in Multi Body Dynamics software. The base line model is correlated with testing using fatigue at some critical locations on Body in White (BIW).

The durability evaluation of overhanging components of a vehicle (Ex: horn, radiator) is a challenge to durability engineers as resonance plays an important role in determining their fatigue life. As resonance cannot be avoided always, it is desirable to develop methods to evaluate life of the component in the presence of resonance. Though the existing vibration test standards suggest test profiles to evaluate resonance failures, there are cases in which, these methods do not yield the proving ground results. This may lead to unnecessary overdesign or unrealistic failures. In such cases it is suggested to generate a sweep endurance test procedure customized to the proving ground or actual roads. This paper studies a methodology for generating a sweep endurance test procedure for evaluation of resonating components. Responses like stress and accelerations were measured in test components in proving ground. Contribution of each frequency band towards overall damage is determined.