This paper documents the result of twist fatigue life simulation correlated with test for an automotive rear suspension. The simulations were performed on both accelerated and standard twist test under constant amplitude cyclic loading. The accelerated twist test was developed for correlation. The result shows that the analytical fatigue life correlates with the test fatigue life within a factor of 2. However, the experiment shows that a crack appears exactly at the v−reinforcement tips to the

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... eld toes as simulation predicted. It is observed that the welds are an important factor in this simulation and rigid modeling is feasible. This project also serves as a case study to the students in predicting fatigue failure of a real industrial part. Introduction As shown in Fig. 1 , a typical automotive rear suspension consists of the v-beam, vreinforcement, stabilizing bar, spring seat, spring seat reinforcement, jounce and jounce stop, knuckle, spacer, shock mount, shock nut, trailing arm, sleeve and bushing. These components are assembled through bolts and welds. Due to normal use of the vehicle and exceptional road conditions, it is essential to perform durability analysis in the rear suspension. The objective of this work is to develop a durability analysis procedure of an automotive rear suspension component under twist loads. Due to driving and road conditions, twist load is common to rear suspension. The first step is to apply linear stress analysis to determine the regions with high possibility of failure, based on displacement and stress distributions, on the suspension components. Then the strain-life/signed von Mises stress approach [1] is used to perform the fatigue analysis at these critical regions. The simulations were performed on both accelerated and standard twist test under constant amplitude cyclic loading. The developed procedure is capable of predicting the fatigue life and potential crack area on the suspension under cyclic twist loading. Experiments are carried out to validate and correlate with the predicted results. In addition to the procedure development, this project also serves as a case study for students in predicting fatigue failure of a real industrial part.