Development of a tool for bench to vehicle damage model calculation: application on a real case

Nowadays, in the industry is used a new approach to verify the reliability of the components in order to optimize costs and time. The need to use this method is due to the continuous implementation and development of the systems in each application field. The method widely used is “ALT” Acceleration Life Testing, thanks to is possible to perform on bench a test which is able to reproduce the behaviour of a component during its entire life but in a shorter time. Moreover, in the mechanical industry the components are subjected to phenomena of fatigue, in particular thermo-mechanical fatigue and, in order to quantify the damage cumulated on the components it is necessary using some models derived from the scientific literature. The purpose of this thesis project is the creation of an automated tool to calculate the fatigue damage through the specific parameters on the engines and their parts, under the application of different loads. The results obtained can be used to calculate the acceleration factors of a test compared to the mission time history profile data recorded in field. The tool, created using the software AVL CONCERTO, is a simplified interface that uses a drag and drop process. The second part of the project was the creation of a damage model to characterize the behaviour of a “WCAC” Water Charge Air to Cooler which showed several failures in field. Then, this model was used to elaborate a cumulative damage hypothesis on a second WCAC, which is going to replace the first one.