PSI - Issue 75

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Structural Integrity Procedia (2025) 000 – 000

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 75 (2025) 719–729

Fatigue Design 2025 (FatDes 2025) Fatigue Simulations in Automotive Components: the importance of representative Validation Tests Marco Bonato a , Arugumapandian Duraipandi b , Antony Raja b and Renal Leon a

a Valeo Power DIvision, La Verrière, France 78322, France b Valeo India Private Limited, Chennai 600119, India

Abstract Vibration qualification testing is crucial for automotive manufacturers and suppliers to ensure vehicle reliability. Automotive specifications are designed to rigorously assess component durability against operational stressors, including vibration-induced fatigue, shock loads from impacts, and general wear-out phenomena. Component qualification typically involves pass/fail testing to verify adherence to customer requirements. Validation of new or redesigned components utilizes both physical bench tests and structural simulations. Simulation, particularly Finite Element Analysis (FEA), has become integral to the design validation process. FEA not only informs the necessity of physical prototype testing (e.g. shaker tests) but also enables design optimization for enhanced durability and performance prediction. This paper illustrates a study-case where FEA simulations, carried out during the design validation of a mechatronic component (an electric driven compressor, eDC) could not identify the weakness of the initial design, resulting in vibration failure during the final vehicle proving ground test. Measurements on the vehicles showed that the initial validation signal provided for FEA (a sinusoidal vibration at fixed frequency) failed to represent the in-service vibration stress loads on the eDC, which are random in nature. After an initial description of the issues encountered, the paper will develop the state of the art methods and tools that should be used to develop representative vibration tests, which are vital for both simulation and testing. The approach, known as “test tailoring method”, offers the advantage of truly representing the vibration damage content the components are experiencing in the lifetime, but in an accelerated manner. Additional consideration will focus on dedicated software solutions that perform quick comparative analysis of vibrations signals, to the importance of the vibration mission profiling, and to the development of specifications based on physics-of-failure (PoF) criteria. By focussing on vibration, the study highlights the importance of validating the design (both on simulation and accelerated bench tests) by the means of representative tests, which need to be correlated to the real in-service stress environment that is affecting the durability of the component. The reference PSD profile effectively represents field vibration, as it accurately predicts the time to failure observed during the customer's final proving ground test. These simulations successfully replicate the cumulative damage inflicted by the carmaker during the vehicle's physical testing.

2452-3216 © 2025 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Fatigue Design 2025 organizers

2452-3216 © 2025 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under the responsibility of Dr Fabien Lefebvre with at least 2 reviewers per paper 10.1016/j.prostr.2025.11.072