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Evaluation of vehicle structural durability is one of the key requirements in design and development process of commercial vehicles. Computer simulations are used to estimate vehicle durability because of its cost advantage and reduction in lead time to launch the product. The objective of this work is to find the service life of the passenger commercial vehicle (Bus) by calculating cumulative fatigue life in operation under actual road conditions. Chassis and superstructure were considered for this exercise. Measured road load data at vehicle wheel centers were used for performing multi-body simulation in ADAMS to extract load histories at attachment points. Modal transient response analysis is performed using MSC-Nastran with the extracted load time history. Strain based fatigue life analysis is carried out in MSC-Fatigue using modal superposition method (MSM). The estimated chassis and superstructure fatigue life is compared with the physical test results.

Evaluation of vehicle structural durability is one of the key requirements in design and development of today's automobiles. Computer simulations are used to estimate vehicle durability to save the cost and time required for building and testing the prototype vehicles. The objective of this work was to find the service life of automotive structures like passenger commercial vehicle (bus) and truck's cabin by calculating cumulative fatigue life for operation under actual road conditions. Stresses in the bus and cabin are derived by means of performing finite element analysis using inertia relief method. Multi body dynamics simulation software ADAMS was used to obtain the load history at the bus and cabin mount locations - using measured load data as input. Strain based fatigue life analysis was carried out in MSC-Fatigue using static stresses from Nastran and extracted force histories from ADAMS. The estimated fatigue life was compared with the physical test results.