| Summary: | Currently, automotive industry continues to strive for
light weight vehicle for improving fuel efficiency and emission reduction. It
is crucial to design vehicles with an optimum weight for a better performance
of the car. In this field, which has
boundaries with fixed standards and regulations, manufacturers continue to work
on characteristics, structures and types of the material to develop new components, which have same safety
specifications but cheaper and lighter than current products.
In this study, the strength analysis of a new design of
an automotive brake pedal is presented. In order to reduce the weight, an
alternative design, plasma welded two parts is studied instead of a monoblock gas arc
welded brake pedal arm. The estimation of the design life of both current and
the new pedal, a linear static stress analysis was performed via finite element
method. Here, critical regions where the stress concentration occurs were
determined. Stress-life method was used to estimate the fatigue life of the brake
pedal. Based on the analysis results, design enhancement solutions were applied
to extend the life of the new brake pedal. The computational analysis of the
fatigue life of the pedal is validated utilizing a custom made test setup.
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