Failure Analysis of a Diesel Engine Crankshaft based on Finite Element Modeling

Abstract

The crankshaft is one of the essential components of an internal combustion engine that converts the piston's linear motion into the crank's rotary motion. This research has been carried out to study the failure analysis of diesel engine crankshafts, and forged steel material is selected. A crankshaft's geometry is relatively complex compared to other parts; its working conditions are critical, and the stress concentration areas are very complicated. While considering all these phenomena, it is significant that a crankshaft's fatigue strength, stiffness, durability, and wear resistance should be checked and analyzed properly. Firstly, a 3D model of the crankshaft is designed using SolidWorks 2022 software. After that, the Model is imported to ANSYS software 2022 R2 student version. However, using ANSYS (finite element method) is carried out on the crankshaft’s Model. This research aims to obtain the variation in stress magnitude at critical locations of the crankshaft by applying variable loads and boundary conditions. Simulation techniques were conducted for both static and dynamic analysis. The total deformation observed at the critical area of the crank pin is 1.3488e-8. The corresponding equivalent stress is 318.37, and the crankshaft's safety factor is 15.