Analysis of automotive liftgate seals using finite element analysis

Abstract

Seals have wide application in automotive products. They are responsible for sealing the car in several parts such as the doors, the air intake cowl seal, and air intake lights seal. Strain and stress studies are very important in order to understand the behavior of polymeric materials, which are generally submitted to great workload variation and environmental influence. This study of EPDM rubber was carried out to define the strain, stress and yield stress. Tensile and compression tests were carried out on workpieces with 100 mm of length. The data were acquired using the Qmat software. A Finite Element Analysis using the MSC Marc Mentat™ was conducted and compared with experimental tests. The results showed an increase of effort proportional to bulb thickness. The proportional increase of compression effort for different displacements was significant. Moreover, physical parameters such as length, thickness, and friction coefficient changed the strain and stress rate.

Finite Element Software for Rubber Products Design

“…The 'White Paper' published by MSC software corporation shares some experience about measurement methods and expert's reports regarding the analysis of elastomer materials in [20]. The practical use of MSC software can be found in some other publications [21][22][23][24][25]. During the analysis of rubber, the deformation can be so large that the mesh used to model the product may become highly distorted, and the analysis cannot go any further without using some special techniques.…”

“…In order to model wear that is larger than the elements of the FE mesh, a wear simulation procedure was developed using global remeshing in [22]. Automotive door sealing products and its cross section were investigated in [23,24]. Comparison between Back Propagation (BP) neural network and the Kriging surrogate model was made in [24].…”