FATIGUE STRENGTH ANALYSIS OF PETROL ENGINE

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CONNECTING-RODWITH AN INTERFERENCE FIT USING FEM

YANG Jianwei1,2 SUN Shouguang1 LI Min2
1
School of Mechanical, Electronic and Control Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong
University, P.O. Box 100044, Beijing; railyjw@163.com
2
School of Machine-electricity Engineering, Taiyuan University of Science and
Technology, P.O. Box 030024, Taiyuan, PH (86)351-887912, FAX (86) 351-6222151;
railyjw@163.com
Abstract: As an important component of the engine power transmission system,
Connecting-rod is the key component in the engine design and development. In order
to the fatigue analysis of the compound movement parts of the Petrol engine,
Three-dimensional nonlinear contact finite element method (CFEM)of the
connecting-rod of 474Q engine was set up, and tress and strain fields were computed
by using Nastran finite element soft. Based on this, the fatigue strength of the
connecting-rod were analyzed according to the Good-man law and the stress life law,
After experimental verification, the analysis of the connecting-rod is correct, The
results show that connecting-rod of 474Q engine can achieve the requirements of
Fatigue strength under current lighter design, so it provides not only the theoretical
foundation to improve design and engine performance development, also optimums
design method for three-dimensional component with component interactions.
Key words: petrol engineˈFEAˈconnecting-rodˈfatigue strength
1 Introduction
Connecting-rod is an important component of the engine power transmission
component. It is requested to have enough rigidity and the intensity for the high air
cylinder explosion pressure, and its light and handy structure is desired for the inertia
force from high speed movement. Therefore it requests the connecting rod to ensure
adequate stiffness and strength as far as possible under the light of the structure. So
the fatigue analysis of the connecting-rod is still the key part in the engine design and
development. Because the working connecting-rod suffers the asymmetric pulsating
stress, the safe reliability of the connecting-rod should be valued according to the
fatigue strength.
A model according with entity was build in the paper, which don’t make any
simplification to coordination and the contact relations between various parts,
Three-dimensional nonlinear contact finite element method (CFEM)of the
connecting-rod with interference fit of 474Q engine was set up, and tress and strain
fields were computed by using Nastran finite element soft. Based on this, the fatigue
strength of the connecting-rod were analyzed according to the Good-man law and the
stress life law, After experimental verification, the analysis of the connecting-rod is
correct, The results show that connecting-rod of 474Q engine can fill the

1933

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International Conference on Transportation Engineering 2009
 1934 ICTE 2009

requirements of Fatigue strength under current lighter design, so it provide the

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theoretical foundation for improve design and engine performance development.

2 Finite Element Model of Connecting Rod with Interference Fit
2.1 The foundation of Connecting rod finite element model
Connecting rod component includes connecting rod body, connecting rod cap,
bearing bush and bolt. According to the requirements of computing applications and
features of parametric design, three dimensional model of connecting rod was built.
In modeling process, we have not made any simplification to the main analysis part,
connecting rod and connecting rod cap, they retains all geometry characteristic; But
to the bolt, the crank and so on has carried on the suitable simplification according to
the rigidity equivalent principle. Engine connecting rod's structure has the
geometrical symmetry, so we can first build half part of the model, then obtain the
other half part of the model according to the mirror image, As shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Connecting rod 3-D Figure 2. Connecting rod bolt

entity model hexahedron model
When the division of the finite element grid, According to the connecting rod
and other components contact characteristic, the bolt, the connecting rod body and
connecting rod cap's contact face carries on the grid encryption; At the same time,
according to connecting rod's stress characteristic, the big end of the Connecting rod
body, small end of the Connecting rod body ,the transition region and the rod body
divides with the thin grid, The rod body central section net lattice is appropriate
sparse; In addition, in order to Obtain good grid quality and guarantee computational
accuracy, the model of the entire fillet, bevel and other geometric changes in the
large should be encrypted. At the same time, due to the piston pin, the crank pin is
not the important analysis object, it’s only for accurate analog loading and support,
Therefore it is also quite sparse to their grid division, So, considering computational
accuracy and computation speed factor, Basic size of the unit is 2mm, Stress
concentration spot is 1mm. The connecting rod body and connecting rod cap adopt
the tetrahedron repeated model, The connecting rod bolt uses the hexahedron unit.
The Three-dimensional entity model and the grid division, please see Figure 2.
2.2 Load condition
Because connecting rod's stress is complex, according to the strength function
effect, we consider the function of three kinds of load.

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(1) Pretightening load

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Using the elastic deformation resiliency to describe the pre-load, it can

accurately reflect the size of the bolt pre-tightening force. In the calculation of the
model, we use the actual bolt of material properties, the length and diameter to set up
the rod unit model, According to the pre-distortion's way, In order to ensure when
there are other external forces, the bolt pre-load and impact of the changes will be
fully in line with the actual situation, the bolt pre-tightening force was exerted in the
finite element model. The method of exerting pre-distortion is thermal method,
Because, the difference in temperature makes the rod unit contract to realize the
accurate bolt pre-tightening force, At the same time, we should consider the large
bonnet, connecting rod bolts and flexible as the system generated by the rigidity of
the co-ordination and deformation.
The method of exerting pre-distortion is thermal method, because, the
temperature difference makes screw rod contracted, the bearing bush expanded, The
bolt difference in temperature calculate is formula (1)
4 F0
't           (1)
D ES Ds 2

Where D is the material thermal-expansion coefficient, Ds is screw rod body

diameter, E is material elasticity coefficient, pre-tightening force F0 (0.6 ~ 0.7)V s 
Coordinated distortion rigidity:
Ce Cb  Cb  Cm           (2)

Where Cb is the stiffness of bolt, C is the stiffness of connecting-rod butt cap.

m

The connecting rod bearing bush assembly pre-tightening force, The connecting
rod bearing bush assembly pre-tightening force by surface strength form function on
contact face.
(2) Inertia force
When the piston arrives at the top dead center, the connecting rod receives the
biggest inertia force, this strength reflects the stretch effect, because the connecting
rod receiving the force of inertia is produced together by the piston group and the
connecting rod group, acting on gudgeon pin, so, when loading, an inertial force is
added averagely on gudgeon pin.
(3) Biggest explosion pressure
During the period of acting traveling schedule, the connecting rod receives the
biggest explosion pressure which by the piston and the gudgeon pin passed on, to the
connecting rod, the application of force object is the biggest explosion pressure
function on the piston pin as gudgeon pin loading. In the biggest explosion pressure
conditions, the connecting rod not only withstands the pre-tight operating mode load,
but also withstands the biggest explosion pressure of acting traveling schedule, this

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 1936 ICTE 2009

load exerts according to the cosine distribution rule on the small connecting rod head.
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The force of eruption distributes in 120° scope, restrains 6 directions.

(4) The boundary of Contacting condition
The composite structure which composed by Connecting rod, gudgeon pin,
Connecting rod body and big head cap, Under loading effect, assembly combined
plane has the contact effect. In this model we have established the contact boundary
condition between the big hole of Connecting rod and gudgeon pin, Connecting rod
and big head cap. When computating, according to contacting condition, the
procedure establishes the contact unit, transfers action and completes simulation.
3 Connecting Rod Finite Element Computa- Tion and Result Analysis
In the nominal operating condition, the pretightening force to bolt is 21597.8N,
and the magnitude of interference of axle bush has been assembled to ǻD=0.063mm,
and the scope node in the 60escope of upper bearing has been added 54.2MPa
pressure, and the rotational speed is 3000r/min. Calculation results are shown as
follows.
3.1 Stress analysis
According to the actual situation of analysis object, the outside load in the finite
element analysis may be directly loaded on the full-scale mockup or the finite
element model. The maximum tension and maximum pressure on the rod end are
added to the finite element model by the concentrated force way. Under the biggest
explosion pressure operating mode, the maxinum stress located at the connecting rod
bolt joint place, and it is 362.9MP. Under the maximum inertial forces operating
mode, the maximum stress located at joint place of the big-end bolt, and it is
373.9MP. The maximum stresses under two kind of operating modes are all smaller
than yield strength 550MP, therefore, the connecting rod can meet intensity demand.
3.2 Analysis of equivalent stress
The fatigue strength is evaluated by the Von Mises equivalent stress.8 high
stress regions on connecting rod are examined, which is shown in Figure 3.
Equivalent stress's value of each region is shown in Table 1. When connecting-rod
was in compressed situation, the maximum Von Mises equivalent stress appears
nearby the position between the connecting-rod body and the butt union part, namely
6th region, and it is 336.7MP. When it was in stretch operating mode, the maximum
Von Mises equivalent stress appears in the bolt attachment point, namely 1th region,
and it is 335.7MP. They are all smaller than the yield limit and can meet the intensity
request.

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International Conference on Transportation Engineering 2009
 ICTE 2009 1937
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Figure 3. Fatigue stress point

Table 1. Von Mises equivalent stress in 8 high stress regions

3.3 Connecting-rod’s fatigue analysis and test

For safety reasons, the stretching and compressing stress of rod can use the
value of the fatigue strength. Rod endures asymmetric cyclic stress. Fatigue safety
factor is solved as follows.
V 1 D V F V F VF VF
Sc Va I max F
Vm I max F
˄3˅
VD \ V V m 2 2
HV

Where, V 1D is fatigue strength tensile pressure at the symmetric case, V 1D =˄0.7~
0.9˅ V 1 ˗ V 1 is bending fatigue strength at the symmetric case, V 1 =˄0.45~0.6˅
V b ˗ V b is the ultimate strength. H V is rough surface impact factor of parts, it can be
defined to 0.5~0.7 when the surface has not been processed for the structural steel,
which is the largest alternating stress amplitude. \ V is the fatigue life cycle
characteristics factor that can show the effect of the average stress on the ripple part.
It can be difined that \ V =0.2. V a is cycle stress amplitude. V m is the average cycle
stress. The safety factors of test area on the connecting rod are shown in Table 2. The
allowable value of safety factor is in the range from 1.5 to 2.5[5]. In order to verify
the correctness of the calculation, electric fatigue test is carried, and the experiment
is shown in Table 2ˈIt can be seen in this article on the link made by the theoretical
analysis is a fundamental rightDŽ

Table 2. Safety factors in 8 high-stress area

Position 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Finite element computation 1.53 1.63 4.46 1.83 6.2 5.16 2.37 2.38
Electrical measurement computation 1.60 1.68 4.40 1.96 6.32 5.42 2.60 2.44

Copyright ASCE 2009 International Conference on Transportation Engineering 2009 (ICTE 2009)
International Conference on Transportation Engineering 2009
 1938 ICTE 2009

It can be seen that measured test data is bigger than results coming from the
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finite element method, which is mainly due to the effect of choice of contact angle on
the stress near big and small end. The smaller the value of contact angle, the greater
the stress results. Generally, the contact angle can adopt 120°~180°. The value is
120° in the paper, so the calculating value is larger.
However, whether the value of the finite element method or the value of the test,
the value of safety factor in some area is still close to the low limit, which is mainly
due to the lightweight design for the current engine, and the reserve of strength is not
very well-off. Through the use of real vehicle for years, the strength of rod meet the
fatigue requirement.
4 Conclusion
The connecting-rod group should be taken as the object and the contact relations
between various components should be considered when building a connecting-rod
finite element model, which can simulate the stress situations of the connecting-rod
in the operating mode such as bolt pretightening force, the superhard bearing bush
and the service load.
Through examing the Von Mises stress in the high stress regions of
connecting-rod’s various essential spot, and estimating the fatigue safety coefficient
to these spots, it has been proven that the various areas’ safety coefficients in the
connecting-rod are all in the design permission scope, and it is safe. Then the
connecting-rod's reliability has been validited by the experiment.

5 Acknowledgment
This paper is support by the project of shanxi province science foundation (No:
2007021023) and the project of Shanxi Youth Science Leader Foundation (No:
20081066) and Doctor Starting-up Foundation of Taiyuan University of Science and
Technology (No: 200666).
References
Zhou yun(1993). “Automobile encyclopedia”, Beijing: China Machine Press.
Wu Fumin(1985). “Structure fatigue strength”, Chengdu: Northwestern
Polytechnical University press.
Su Tiexiong, Lv Caiqin(2002). “Contact question to the influence of connecting-
rod’s finite element analysis”. Combustion engine transaction ,2, pp:22̚24
Lu Jiqing,Shen Zujing(1993). “Motor car engine design”.Beijing: Tsinghua
University press
Optasanu, V., and Bonneau, D(2000). ‘‘Finite Element Mass-Conserving Cavitation
Algorithm in Pure Squeeze Motion Validation/Application to a Connecting
Rod Small End Bearing,’’ Transaction of the ASME, 122, pp. 162–169.

Copyright ASCE 2009 International Conference on Transportation Engineering 2009 (ICTE 2009)
International Conference on Transportation Engineering 2009