Fatigue software improvement for calculating by FEA a complete map of the damage due to a duty cycle, regarding thermo-mechanical failure mode. Application to a truck cylinder head lifetime assessment

Physical tests considering real customer usages for truck engine components durability validation, are very expensive and time consuming. Using a calculation method enabling to determine cumulative damage due to a specific duty cycle, seems then a priority, especially for fatigue thermo-mechanical failure mode. However, most of these complex engine components have several brittle areas, and the current calculation methods within Volvo GTT France allow only to analyze one or few critical areas, without considering the complete behavior of the component in the analysis. With the improvement of the tool Sofast, realized through a partnership between Volvo GTT France and Arobas Technologies, it is then now possible to calculate by FEA the complete damage field on a specific component regarding thermo-mechanical failure mode. In this paper, one industrial example is detailed, to show the effectiveness of the methodology: a damage analysis of a truck cast iron cylinder head. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.