Optimizing the Design and Material used for Connecting Rod through Finite Element Simulation

Abstract

Connecting rod plays a major role in damping the various load while transferring the reciprocating movement to the rotating movement in the crankshaft. The careful design of the connecting rod is an important step to avoid the unexpected failure of the engine. The connecting rod experience cyclic tensile and compressive stress during suction, compression and power stroke. Moreover, due to the combustion inside the combustion chamber, thermal stress also will develop in the connecting rod. The main focus of this research work is to compare the structural stresses of different types of connecting rods used in IC engine. In this work modeling of different connecting rods has been done using SOLID WORKS and ANSYS workbench is used to do the FEM analysis. In this analysis, three different materials like structural steel, aluminium alloy and titanium are used for comparing the mechanical properties under different operating conditions of the connecting rod. Force and fixed support are considered as the boundary conditions and force is applied on the pin end and the crank end is considered as the fixed support of the connecting rod. At the beginning of this work, structural mechanical properties like equivalent stress, equivalent strain, total deformation and safety factor are calculated under a static load condition. It is inferred from this work that structural steel is the best material among the three elements due to the less total deformation, equivalent strain, safety factor and a considerable equivalent strain.