Dynamic Simulation of Chassis Component Loads

It is desirable in the early phases of component design to have an idea of the loads that the component will see during a typical durability cycle. These loads, in turn, can be used for fatigue testing of the components. Traditionally, the design engineer had to wait until quite late into the vehicle program development to obtain actual loads seen by the component during a durability test cycle. The other option was to estimate extreme input loads to the suspension and calculate the resulting static loads on a given component. The latter method does not include the dynamic loading effect on the component - extreme loads normally occur during a very small time interval.