V o-Huu-Thuc Nguyen

The aim of this study is to propose a reliable and generalizable flexible numerical approach for the fatigue life calculation of fatigue life of automotive wheel bearings manufactured by NTN-SNR Europe. The proposed methodology will take into consideration the impact of the manufacturing processes, including forging, shot blasting and orbital forming on the structural high cycle fatigue resistance of the component. Note that Rolling Contact Fatigue of the component is not considered in this work. The influences of pre-strain, surface condition and residual stresses will be characterized by fatigue tests at different levels: normalized specimens, elementary structures and the component itself. The results of the fatigue tests on normalized specimens with different surface conditions and under different load ratios will be compared with the results obtained by validation tests on the wheel bearings to determine the security zone in which there is no risk of cracking the component. using the Dang Van criterion. Fatigue tests on elementary structures will make it possible to further understand the cracking mechanisms by decoupling different effects of fabrication processes. Based on these experimental data and the analysis of the tested samples, fatigue criteria adapted to each critical zone of the bearing will be developed. These will be implemented into a numerical simulation workflow, including the manufacturing process and the use of the final component, with the commercial finite element software, Forge and Abaqus. The final objective is to improve the precision and reliability of the structural fatigue life predictions.

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