doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2695.2007.01188.

Fatigue failure prediction of press fitted parts subjected to a cyclic

loading condition by finite element methods
W. J. KANG 1 , A. K. KIM 2 and G. H. KIM 1
1 Structural
Durability Research Center, Korea Automotive Technology Institute, Chonan, 339-912, South Korea, 2 Division of Mechanical and
Automotive Engineering, Kongju National University, Kongju, 314-701, South Korea

Received in final form 11 June 2007

A B S T R A C T The lower control arm is one of the most important components and constrains the longi-
tudinal and vertical movements of the wheel relative to the vehicle. Recently, aluminium
alloy has become a constituent material of the arm instead of steel in order to reduce the
weight of the vehicle. As a cyclic external load is applied to the ball joint of the arm, the
contact force between the steel bush housing and the aluminium arm joined by the press
fitting varies through the deformation of the rubber bush. The oscillatory contact force
between these components could determine the life of the aluminium alloy arm. Indeed,
the failure of the arm was observed at the bush mount where fretting is expected. In this
study, nonlinear finite element simulations were carried out to investigate the cause of
the failure. As a result, it turned out that the failure of the mount was associated with
the fretting introduced by the press fitting and the cyclic stress due to the oscillatory
contact force by external cyclic loads. In addition, the failure location and lifetime of the
aluminium alloy arm were predicted based on a damage analysis.

Keywords: damage; fatigue life; finite element analysis; press fitting; residual stress.

of the arm instead of steel in order to reduce the weight of

INTRODUCTION
Even small oscillatory relative movements typically in
the range of 1–100 μm between two contact surfaces (so-
called fretting) may produce the accumulation of dam-
age, which leads to the failure of a component in the long
term. Thus many researchers have made efforts to predict
lifetime under various fretting conditions, and classified
almost 50 factors influencing the life, such as contact pres-
sure, slip amplitude, friction coefficient etc.1 Nevertheless
the lifetime has often been predicted simply by stress- or
strain-based multi-axial fatigue methods based on con-
ventional fatigue theory2–5 because, although it is known
that the major fretting factors have an effect on the life,
many of them are associated directly or indirectly with
the cyclic multi-axial stresses imposed on the contacting
components.6–11
The lower control arm is one of the most important com-
ponents in the vehicle suspension system and constrains
the longitudinal and vertical movements of a wheel. Re-
cently, aluminium alloy has become a constituent material
2
Correspondence: W. Kang. E-mail: wjkang@katech.re.kr
the vehicle. The aluminium alloy arm is manufactured by
hot forging process with a pre-form obtained by a casting
process. Figure 1 depicts a lower control arm assembled
in the front suspension of a vehicle. The arm is mounted
on a sub-frame by rubber bush joints and connected to
a knuckle by a ball joint. The steel housing contain-
ing a rubber bush at the joint is inserted into a hole in
the arm by a press fitting without heating for the final
product.
The lower control arm should endure the many random
cyclic loads on the roads without any failure. Conse-
quently, reliable methodologies to ensure the mechani-
cal performance of press-fitted components are required.
Almer et al.12 performed crack initiation and stress-life-
based fatigue analysis under the residual stresses due to
pre-straining or press-fitting, and reported that the micro-
stress relaxed more rapidly than the macro-stress. Hautala
et al.13 investigated fretting fatigue failure in a connect-
ing rod to which a bearing was connected by a press fit-
ting. Goh et al.14 studied an effect of plastic deformation
on the fretting fatigue failure. Kim et al.15 studied warm
shrink fitting in the assembly of automobile transmissions
and proposed a closed form equation for its optimisation.

1194 
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 FAT I G U E FA I L U R E P R E D I C T I O N O F P R E S S F I T T E D PA RT S 1195

M AT E R I A L P R O P E R T I E S
For the construction of the input deck for stress and fa-
tigue analysis, aluminium alloy T6–6082 was tested by ap-
propriate test methods. Specimens were made of materials
taken from three different locations in the aluminium al-
loy arm. The dog bone-type specimens for tensile strength
and fatigue properties were machined as shown in Fig. 2.
The tensile strength data can be found in Table 1. Fig. 3
represents the fatigue properties of the material in terms
of stress-life. A fatigue test was performed with load
ratio (R = Pmin /Pmax ) of 0.1. Although Smith-Watson-
Topper21 and Fatemi–Socie22 parameters can be applied
to the fretting failure, the conventional stress-life
curve was used in this study because the life of real
suspension usually belongs to the high-cycle fatigue
regime.
Stress-life at locations A, B and C, are shown in Fig. 3.
It indicates that although the final shape of the arm was
achieved by forging the pre-form with an initial thickness
of about 50 mm, the mechanical behaviours of the ma-
terial after forging were maintained because the forging
ratios at the sampled locations were similar; in the range of
0.6–0.7. Since the variation with respect to sampled loca-
tion was minor, all the stress-life data in Fig. 3 were best
fitted by a stress-life (S–N) curve.

Fig. 1 Front suspension system with an aluminium lower arm: (a)

Schematic diagram of a suspension and (b) appearance of an
aluminium lower arm.

Juuma16 investigated the torsional fatigue strength of

various shrink-fitted assemblies and reported that the
fretting effect could be abbreviated by an increase in con-
tact pressure. Other research by finite element methods
to analyse the fretting failure is found in.17–19 Church-
man and Hills20 studied the interfacial contact behaviour
under oscillatory shear and constant pressure, and re-
ported a critical coefficient of friction and its practical
relevance to the fretting fatigue at some types of spline Fig. 2 Locations in the arm for specimen preparation.
joints.
Fatigue tests on aluminium alloy lower control arms un-
der uniform sinusoidal load cycles were performed in the Table 1 Strength data at each sample location
present study. As a result, the failure location of the arm
was observed to be in the bush mount region joined by Strength
press fitting. Nonlinear finite element analysis was car- Location Yield strength (MPa) Tensile strength (MPa)
ried out to investigate the cause of the failure. Moreover,
A 281 325
evaluating the damage for one load cycle, the prediction
B 287 334
of failure location and the lifetime of the aluminium alloy C 310 339
lower control arm were attempted.


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1196 W. J. K A N G et al.

Table 2 Summary of fatigue test results for aluminium arms

Number Load (N) Life cycle Failure location

1 5000 Over 3 500 000 No failure.

2 7000 660 000 G-bush neck
3 7000 1 570 000 G-bush
4 7000 1 560 000 G-bush
5 7000 940 000 Damper-bush
6 7000 1 700 000 Damper-bush
7 8000 1 150 000 Damper-bush
8 8000 1 210 000 Damper-bush
9 8000 400 000 G-bush
10 9000 310 000 G-bush
11 9000 240 000 G-bush
12 9000 480 000 Damper-bush

Fig. 3 S–N curve of the T6–6082 for the aluminium lower arm.

may be expected) while failures were observed at the

FAT I G U E FA I L U R E O F A L U M I N I U M
A L L OY A R M
A dozen aluminium lower arm samples were prepared
and tested by the 2.5 ton MTS linear actuating system
with a fixture. Figure 4 depicts the experimental set-up.
A-bush and G-bush were fixed to a rigid body while a
cyclic load was applied to the ball joint in the longitu-
dinal direction as shown in the figure because the lon-
gitudinal load is most severe in the front lower control
arm of the vehicle. To prevent the early failure of the
rubber bush by the hysteretic heat, an air-cooling system
was utilized. Test results are summarized in Table 2; ap-
plied loads and failure locations as well as life cycle can be
found.
No failure was observed over 3.5 million cycles with a
cyclic load of 5000 N (the infinite life below the load
Fig. 4 Experimental setup for fatigue tests of lower arms.
G-bush and damper-bush mounts with loads higher than
5000 N. Ten among the eleven fractured specimens frac-
tured at the bush mounts except one (Specimen No. 2)
showing a failure in the neck near the G-bush mount
(see Fig. 5). It is also noticed that the life cycle decreases
down to 24 × 104 cycles as the cyclic load increases to
9000 N.
FAT I G U E L I F E A S S E S S M E N T W I T H O U T
FRETTING
The original outer diameter of the steel housing for the
rubber bush was designed to be larger than the inner
diameter of the hole in the arm made of aluminium al-
loy. The difference in measured diameter varied from
0.20 mm to 0.47 mm along the circumference because
of the geometrical irregularity of the rubber bush. As the
rubber bush is pressed into the hole of the lower control
arm, the residual stress remains in the mounting region
due to the expansion of the hole. Figure 6 illustrates the
press-fitting process for the insertion of the G-bush into
the lower arm hole.
The press-fitting process was modelled by shrink fit-
ting for the convenience and efficiency of the sim-
ulation in this study. In order to simulate the press
fitting, the CONTACT INTERFERENCE option in
ABAQUS23 was used. The G-bush mount was selected
for the analysis to simplify the problem. The equilib-
rium position and stresses due to shrink fitting were
calculated using the contact algorithm with an ini-
tial penetration between different diameters. A uniform
penetration with an average difference of 0.33 mm was
assumed in this study. Fig. 7 represents the stress–strain
curves of the steel for the bush housing and the alu-
minium alloy for the lower arm implemented in the model,
respectively.


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Fig. 5 Failure locations: (a) G-bush neck, (b) G-bush mount, and (c) Damper-bush mount.
Fig. 6 Press fitting of a bush assembly into a lower arm.
Fig. 7 Stress–strain curves of bush housing and aluminium lower
arm.
Figure 8 represents the yield level of von Mises stress
at the interface between the steel housing of the rubber
bush and the aluminium alloy arm only by shrink-fitting
analysis without any external loads. If the contact force is
independent of external load, the contact force remains as
a residual stress which may have an effect on the fatigue
life because of the mean stress effect. Meanwhile, the stress
distribution under the cyclic load at the ball joint without

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FAT I G U E FA I L U R E P R E D I C T I O N O F P R E S S F I T T E D PA RT S 1197
Fig. 8 von Mises stress distribution due to shrink fitting.
press fitting was analysed. If significant stresses are ob-
served in the bush mount region, the main reason for the
failure may not be the press fitting. Figure 9 depicts the
boundary and loading conditions for the simulation. All
degrees of freedom of bush cores were fixed and 7000 N
was applied to the ball joint. The interface between the
steel housing and the lower arm was constrained with
KINEMATIC COUPLING in ABAQUS.23 That is, no
relative movement was allowed. Second-order tetra ele-
ments were used for the aluminium arm and brick ele-
ments were used for the rubber bushes. A total of 132 096
nodes and 83 066 elements were used in the finite element
model. To simulate hyper-elastic behaviour of the rubber
bush, the Mooney–Rivlin constitutive model was adopted.
1198 W. J. K A N G et al.
Fig. 9 Boundary and loading conditions.
Fig. 10 von Mises stress distribution obtained without the press
fitting.
Figure 10 represents the resulting von Mises stress
distribution. As a result, any significant stresses were not
observed in the bush mount region. The maximum von
Mises stress of 157 MPa appeared at the point of G-
bush neck. Therefore, it may be concluded that the main
cause of failures of bush mounts is not the external load
itself.
A fatigue analysis was accomplished by considering the
residual stress caused by shrink fitting as a mean stress.
Fatigue analysis was carried out with FEMFAT in this
study. Two load channels are allocated in FEMFAT.24 One
is for stress by the external load and the other is for stress
by the shrink fitting. The critical-plane approach for a

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Fig. 11 Haigh diagram of the aluminium alloy.
multi-axial fatigue problem was adopted for the analysis.
A Haigh (modified Goodman) diagram of the aluminium
alloy obtained with ultimate tensile strength and fatigue
limit at R = 0.1 as shown in Fig. 11 was implemented in
FEMFAT for the mean stress effect. Damage by damage
accumulation of Palmgren and Miner25 was evaluated by
FEMFAT using an S–N curve (Fig. 3). The Palmgren–
Miner rule is a linear damage accumulation theory ignor-
ing the effect of the sequence of different loading cycles as
follows:
N
ni
D= (1)
i=1
Nfi
where D is the cumulative damage, ni is the number of cy-
cles experienced at loading i, N fi is the number of cycles
to the failure predicted at loading i, and N is the expe-
rienced total number of cycles at different loading. It is
assumed that failure takes place when the summation of
the damage fractions for all the stress levels is equal to or
higher than a damage criterion. In this study, the critical
damage value of 1.0 was used for the determination of
failure.
The stress from the external load and the shrink-fitting
residual stress were allocated to the cyclic loading channel
and constant load channel in FEMFAT for the super-
position, respectively. Finally, FEMFAT provided the
cumulated damage. Figure 12 represents the damage
distribution in the arm cumulated for 10 000 cycles under
7000 N. The occurrence of failure at the G-bush mount
turns out to be less probable because the maximum
damage appears at the neck rather than the G-bush mount.
Thus the residual stress seems not to be the direct cause
for the failure of the arm even though the residual stress
generated by the shrink fitting increases the stress level at
the bush mount.
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Fig. 12 Damage contour accumulated for 10 000 load cycles when
the shrink fitting is included as mean stress without contact force
variation.
FAT I G U E L I F E A S S E S S M E N T W I T H F R E T T I N G
The contact pressure between the steel bush housing and
the aluminium arm provides cyclic shear traction as well
as bulk stress. Thus the oscillatory contact force was taken
into account in the fatigue damage assessment of the press
fitted joint for the prediction of the failure location. Since
the direct nonlinear stress analysis for about one million
load cycles requires tremendous computation time and
memory, a cycle damage evaluation technique was utilized
for the fatigue damage assessment instead, assuming that
the shear traction due to fretting was stabilized over a
small number of cycles.
In order to investigate the validity of the assumption,
stress histories at the contacted region between the steel
housing of the G-bush and the lower control arm for two
cycles of load were analysed with boundary and loading
conditions as shown in Figs. 9 and 13. State-(1) and state-
(2) in Fig. 13 indicate the peak loads in opposite direc-
tions. It was considered that the deformation of the rub-
ber bush reaches its peak at the same time as the peak
load. Initial stresses in the arm are almost uniformly dis-
tributed along the periphery of the G-bush housing. As
the rubber bush deforms, the stress distribution varies
from the initial state, resulting in the different distribu-
tions at state-(1) and state-(2) as shown in Fig. 14. As one
side of the G-bush is compressed, the opposite side is re-
leased from the press-fitted state. The shear stress dis-
tributions at both the states are represented in Fig. 15.
The large amplitude of cyclic shear stress appears at the
surface of the G-bush mount, which was not observed by
the stress analysis without fretting as shown in Fig. 11.
Moreover, almost the same stress histories are repeated as
shown in Fig. 16. The von Mises stress after step number
5 (in 2nd cycle) is also almost the same. Thus the dam-
age for one cycle of load was calculated by the cyclic
stress and the fatigue life was predicted by the repeated
stress cycles in this study. Finally, the fatigue life was de-

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FAT I G U E FA I L U R E P R E D I C T I O N O F P R E S S F I T T E D PA RT S 1199
Fig. 13 Cyclic load to investigate the stress history.
termined by a linear damage accumulation analysis with
FEMFAT.
Figure 17 represents the distribution of damage accu-
mulated for one cycle of load by the simulation. In fact,
the maximum damage of 4.86 × 10−7 (the corresponding
fatigue life is 2 057 000 cycles) appears at the interface be-
tween the G-bush housing and the arm, indicating that
the G-bush mount is weak in the arm. The fatigue lives
of the G-bush mount under various loads are summarized
in Table 3. The predicted lives are conservative compared
to those of the experiments.
Although the G-bush mount appears weak in the arm
from the analysis, frequent real failures (four specimens
among 10 specimens in Table 1) were also observed
at the damper bush mount. Figure 18 represents the
damage distribution at the damper bush mount after
one load cycle calculated by the same method as the
G-bush mount. However, the damage at the damper bush
mount is not as significant as at the G-bush mount.
Thus this frequent failure at the damper bush mount
must be attributed to other causes such as manufactur-
ing process, material defect etc. One may be the coarse
material structure of the damper mount due to a lower
forging ratio which decreases the fatigue strength of the
damper mount. In fact, the damper bush mount suffers
from significantly less deformation during forging a pre-
form with original thickness of 50mm than the G-bush
mount.
CONCLUSION
Fatigue tests on aluminium alloy lower control arms were
performed under uniform sinusoidal load cycles in the
present study. The failure of the arm was observed at the
bush mount region joined by press fitting. Nonlinear fi-
nite element simulations were carried out to investigate
1200 W. J. K A N G et al.

Fig. 14 von Mises stress distribution at load

states indicated in Fig. 13.

Fig. 15 Shear stress distribution: (a)

state-(1), and (b) state-(2).

the cause of the failure. It turned out that the main cause of damage analysis including the shrink fitting and stress cy-
the failure of the mount was associated with the residual cles by contact force variation allowed one to predict the
stress by the press fitting and the cyclic stress by exter- failure location as well as the life time of the aluminium
nal cyclic load. The nonlinear simulation method and the alloy lower control arm.


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Table 3 Summary of fatigue lives of G-bush mount under

various loads

Life cycle

Load (N) Prediction Experiment

7000 2 057 000 1 565 000

8000 1 178 000 400 000
9000 792 000 275 000

Acknowledgments
The work reported herein is part of work funded by the
Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy of Republic
of Korea. The authors wish to gratefully appreciate their
Fig. 16 Stress histories at a point in the G-bush mount under the support during this work.
cyclic load in Fig. 12.

Fig. 17 Damage distribution for one load

cycle when G-bush is shrink fitted.

Fig. 18 Damage distribution for one load

cycle when G-bush and Damper bush are
shrink fitted.


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