Estimation of air-spring life based on accelerated experiments

This paper presents a method for estimating the fatigue life of the air-spring, used in truck-cab suspension. Experimental fatigue data, together with finite element analysis data, was used to form the stress life (S-N) curve. Experimental data was obtained from several accelerated experiments using constant load amplitude. Finite element analysis was used to describe the stress-strain conditions in the air-spring's bellows. Stress tensors gained by FE analysis were exported and used to calculate equivalent uni-axial stresses, using the critical plane approach. To calculate the fatigue life of the air-spring the Palmgren-Miner linear damage hypothesis was used. The same hypothesis was also used to transform linear loading spectrum to constant amplitude load spectrum. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.