The development of computational procedures has allowed
increasing the range of virtual analysis of various engineering
problems. The design of industrial products must meet requirements
of durability, strength, reliability, security, and criteria of low
cost and weight. These requirements are among the many reasons that
enable technological advances; and such advances are needed to make
possible to increasingly use software's capacity of simulating
real operating conditions of components.
This work has as main objective to achieve fatigue analysis of a
connecting rod of an automotive internal combustion engine by using
software based on finite element method. For this were used curves
of loads and boundary conditions, obtained from experimental
analysis of the component, so it may be possible a correlation
between experimental and computational results.
The connecting rod is under cyclic loading during its entire
lifetime, which generates high levels of stress that, depending on
their characteristics and magnitude, can lead to the component
fatigue failure.
This work is important because when results of a finite element
model and an experimental fatigue test are correlated, it will be
possible to run multiple virtual analyses in order to determine the
component regions that need to be modified or improved. Performing
such analysis aims at reducing costs related to prototypes
production and experimental tests, since these are generally
expensive and requires long time for execution.