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Vibroacoustic properties specify among others the quality of vehicles and contribute to customer satisfaction. In the early design phase, a finite element (FE) analysis is usually carried out to predict and design vibroacoustic properties. Nevertheless, the inevitable lack of information adversely affects the model-based prediction like vibroacoustic vehicle properties. For instance, a deterministic one-point model parameter like Young’s Modulus, which ignores the variance due to manufacturing tolerance, leads to among others an incomplete determination of real vibroacoustic behavior of the vehicle in FE simulation. At this point, uncertainty is only partially taken into account in vehicle vibroacoustic. This paper contributes to mastering uncertainty in model-based prediction of vibroacoustic vehicle properties.

Additive manufacturing offers new options for lightweight design for safety parts under cyclic loading conditions. In order to utilize all advantages and exploit the full potential of additive manufactured parts, the main impact factors on the cyclic material behavior not only have to be identified and quantified but also prepared for the numerical fatigue assessment. This means in case of the AlSi10Mg aluminum alloy to consider influences related to the exposure strategy, heat treatment, microstructure, support structures and the surface conditions, as well as the influence of the load history and finally the interaction of these influences in order to perform a high quality fatigue assessment. Due to these reasons, and with respect to the numerical effort, the cyclic material behavior of additively manufactured AlSi10Mg produced by selective laser melting will be discussed.

Manganese sulfides (MnS) are nonmetallic, ductile inclusions with high melting temperature (1610 °C) which improve the machinability and retard the grain growth in steels, in addition of contributing to avoid cracking during hot working. In this paper, the effect of manganese sulfides on the fatigue life of the vanadium micro-alloyed forging steel 38MnVS6 is discussed. Force-controlled fatigue tests are performed on small sized specimens until the crack occurs. The fatigue life of the forged material, presented by Wöhler curves, is considerably reduced at high levels of the nominal stress amplitude compared to the wrought material. Moreover, it is evident that the presence of longer and thinner particles of MnS reduces the scatter band of Wöhler curves and decreases the fatigue strength of the material. This paper presents a first attempt to find a relation between the shape and content of manganese sulfides due to the forging process and the fatigue life of the material.

The cyclic material behavior is investigated, by strain-controlled testing, of 8 mm thick sheet metal specimens and butt joints, manufactured by manual gas metal arc welding (GMAW). The materials used in this investigation are the high-strength structural steels S960QL, S960M and S1100QL. Trilinear strain-life curves and cyclic stress-strain curves have been derived for the base material and the as-welded state of each steel grade. Due to the cyclic softening in combination with a high load level at the initial load cycle, the cyclic stress-strain curve cannot be applied directly for a fatigue assessment of welded structures. Therefore, the transient effects have been analyzed in order to describe the time-variant material behavior in a more detailed manner. This should be the basis for the enhancement of the fatigue life estimation.

In vehicle design and engineering, the fatigue of materials is a size-dependent phenomenon, which occurs in every safety-relevant component. An inaccurate fatigue assessment, neglecting relevant influencing factors, may therefore either lead to considerable safety risks or to a significant oversizing of the component. Due to the size dependency of the microstructure and the related deformation and fatigue mechanisms, the fatigue life estimation requires an understanding of the cyclic material behavior as well as the damage mechanisms of materials on different scales. In this respect, local strain-based fatigue design concepts are advantageous for the estimation of the fatigue properties of components with arbitrary size and geometry, because the applicable material models allow an implementation of a realistic cyclic material behavior and a relation to different fatigue damage mechanisms in the elastic and the elastic-plastic load regime.

Fatigue testing is known to be time consuming and expensive. Therefore, it should be the main target of fatigue research to accelerate the derivation of fatigue properties. Depending on the required properties, strain- or load-controlled fatigue tests have to be performed. Carrying out load-controlled fatigue tests is necessary to derive the influence of mean stresses and notches on the fatigue strength and fatigue life of different materials and joining technologies. In the case of material samples, increasing test frequencies could be a proper way to accelerate the fatigue testing, as long as the increased test frequencies have no influence on the resulting fatigue life. In the case of strain-controlled fatigue tests, it is not possible to increase the test frequencies in order to accelerate the fatigue tests. Therefore, the Incremental Step Test, which allows the derivation of the cyclic stress-strain curve with only one test, was introduced.

For the design of thick-walled nodular cast iron components, fatigue assessment, especially in the context of local imperfections in the material, is a challenging task. Not only the cyclic material behavior of the sound baseline material, but also the cyclic behavior of materials with imperfections, such as shrinkages, dross and chunky graphite, needs to be considered during the design process of cast iron components. In addition to this, new materials, such as solid solution strengthened alloys, offer new possibilities in lightweight design, but need to be assessed concerning their fatigue strength and elastic-plastic material behavior. If a safe and reproducible fatigue assessment for any component cannot be performed and a secure usage is therefore not given, the cast components are generally rejected, leading to a loss of additional material, energy and money for recasting the component.

This paper makes a contribution toward a more efficient chassis durability process for the development of passenger cars, in which the simulation of relevant load data is a time-consuming part. This is especially due to the full vehicle model complexity which is usually determined by the demands of rough road simulations. However, for the load calculation on a racetrack, time saving model approaches that are more simplified might be sufficient. Our investigation comprises two levels of vehicle model complexity: one with all chassis parts modeled in a multibody system environment and one characteristic curve based model in an internal simulation environment. Both approaches consider an original chassis control system as a Software-in-the-Loop model. By the evaluation of real-world experiments the main influence factors in terms of durability are demonstrated. With the help of those highly sensitive durability criteria the measurement and simulation results are then compared.