Failure of the light beam direction adjusting mechanism (LDAM) of an automotive headlight might occur after hundreds of driving hours, though the strength of components conforms to the requirement specified in the random vibration bench test standard. In order to determine the causes of the failure, fatigue life prediction and failure analysis based on numerical method of the LDAM exposed to random loading both in bench test and field experiment were carried out. In the bench test analysis, the Dirlik method was utilized to calculate the lifetime by taking the power spectrum density in the frequency domain. In the fatigue analysis for the field experimental loading, to consider the effect of nonuniform temperature distribution, a numerical process in time domain is developed to calculate the lifetime of the LDAM subjected to the random vibration caused by road surface roughness. As a result, the predicted life and failure locations are in good agreement with real life and actual failure regions, respectively.
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