Simulation of stress intensity factor and fatigue life on leaf spring failure.

Stress intensity factor (SIF) is one of the parameters in determining the stress at the crack tip caused by crack nucleation. Prediction of stress at the crack tip using LEFM (Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics) and EPFM (Elastic Plastic Fracture Mechanics) approaches through SIF and J-integral becomes very important in estimating crack propagation, life and energy release rate. This study aims to analyze the SIF simulation (mode I and mode III), fatigue crack growth rate and J-Integral on leaf spring failure using ANSYS. The initial simulation carried out is preprocessing including crack design 5 mm, crack tip meshing with sphere radius = 10 mm and element size = 0.5 mm, while the boundary condition for the applied force is 3500 N. Failure will be dominated in the opening mode because mode I has the highest SIF value of KI = 469.67 MPa √mm compared and KIII = 386.27 MPa √mm. This is in accordance with the calculation of the analysis of the number of cycles and the fatigue crack growth rate where mode I has a lower number of cycles, namely 187500 cycles compared to mode III of 29000 cycles, while the fastest fatigue crack growth rate is produced by mode I. The decrease in strength is also analyzed based on the J-Integral analysis where, mode I produces a value of 3.809 mJ/mm2 and mode II 3.790 mJ/mm2 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]