Lightweight Crankshafts

2006-01-0016

04/03/2006

Event
SAE 2006 World Congress & Exhibition
Authors Abstract
Content
The automotive industry continues to look for opportunities to reduce weight and cost while simultaneously increasing performance and durability. Since the introduction of aluminum cylinder blocks and heads, very few “innovations” have been made in powertrain design and materials. Cast crankshafts have the potential to produce significant weight savings (3-18 kg) with little or no cost penalty. With the advent of new, high strength, cast ductile iron materials, such as MADI™ (machinable austempered ductile iron), which has the highly desirable combination of good strength, good toughness, good machinability and low cost, lightweight crankshafts are posed to become a high volume production reality. An extreme demonstration of a lightweight crankshaft is the current use of a cast MADI crankshaft in the 1100 HP Darrell Cox sub-compact drag race car. This paper provides examples of lightweight crankshaft designs and a comparison of machinability, fatigue performance and vehicle performance of regular cast ductile iron, regular cast austempered ductile iron, cast MADI and forged steel.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2006-01-0016
Pages
9
Citation
Druschitz, A., Fitzgerald, D., and Hoegfeldt, I., "Lightweight Crankshafts," SAE Technical Paper 2006-01-0016, 2006, https://doi.org/10.4271/2006-01-0016.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Apr 3, 2006
Product Code
2006-01-0016
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English