Development of Full Articulation Subsystem FEA Model for Validating Vehicle Suspension Durability

Vehicle durability is a cornerstone of automotive engineering, directly impacting customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and warranty costs. Traditionally durability validation of suspension systems often rely on virtual validation of individual components (an approach which can overlook complex non-linear system interactions) and followed by expensive full vehicle physical tests which happen very late in the vehicle development phase, which often results in correlation gap between virtual and physical realms, resulting in components redesigning and production delays. This paper presents a more efficient, high-fidelity, full-articulation suspension subsystem finite element (FE) model development specifically for durability assessments. This integrated model enables comprehensive block cycle durability assessments, providing a holistic understanding of system behavior and eliminating the inefficiencies of analyzing components in isolation. This methodology yields significant advantages in cost and development speed. It facilitates the replacement of expensive full-vehicle durability tests with more economical and targeted physical subsystem tests, which can be directly correlated with the virtual model's predictions. This front-loading of the durability validation process empowers engineers to identify and resolve potential durability issues earlier, accelerating the overall vehicle development timeline. The paper will entail the detailed methodology used to develop the non-linear full articulation suspension FE model for durability assessments, the correlation procedure against both Multi-Body Dynamics (MBD) models and physical test data, and key fatigue life results to demonstrate the model's high predictive accuracy and its effectiveness as a predictive tool in the durability engineering workflow.