SAE TECHNICAL

PAPER SERIES 2007-01-3546

Development and Application of Buckling

Estimation Method in Engine
Connecting Rod
Heewook Moon, Sungwon Shin, Kyungwoo Lee,
Hoon Chang and Daejoon Yeom
Hyundai-Motor Company

14th Asia Pacific Automotive

Engineering Conference
Hollywood, California, USA
August 5-8, 2007

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 2007-01-3546

Development and Application of Buckling Estimation Method

in Engine Connecting Rod
Heewook Moon, Sungwon Shin, Kyungwoo Lee, Hoon Chang and Daejoon Yeom
Hyundai-Motor Company

Copyright © 2007 SAE International

ABSTRACT estimated more exact critical buckling load than previous

In prediction of the critical buckling load of structures,
Merchant-Rankine formula is very powerful considering
both elastic buckling load and plastic material behavior.
However this formula can’t be applied to the connecting
rod of engine because of the difficulty in defining the end
conditions and the geometry change in the shank
unfortunately. In this study, we modified Merchant-
Rankine formula with aid of FEA and a subspace
iteration method. The developed method here was
verified by buckling experiments and applied to several
connecting rods. As a result, the guideline of buckling
failure is built using the buckling safety factor defined
here.
methods and is verified with experiments. The design
guideline to prevent buckling has been also built by
applying this method to various types of conrods.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
MERCHANT-RANKINE FORMULA
The buckling behavior of a column or a board having
constant cross section follows well Euler’s equation
based on solid mechanics and elasticity [3]. The critical
buckling load Pcr |e and stress V cr |e are respectively
expressed as equation (1) and (2) in the elastic ranges

INTRODUCTION S 2 EI
Pcr | e (1)
( KL) 2
The recent studies of automobile engineering focus on
developing the high performance and high fuel efficiency
engine. Particularly most engineers have tried to reduce § 1 · 1
the weights of moving components of the engine for V cr |e S 2 E ¨ 2 ¸ 2
(2)
achieving high fuel efficiency. However the connecting
©K ¹ (L / r)
road (hereafter referred as conrod) tends to be over-
designed for the reliability since it is one of the main Here E , I , L , r , and K are Young’s modulus, the
moving parts transferring the huge ignition pressure to inertia moment of cross section, the column length (or
the crankshaft. The conrod consists of a small-end conrod length), the rotational radius of area, and the
transferring the ignition pressure through the piston, a effective length factor, respectively. As seen in equation
2
big-end gripping the crankshaft, and finally a shank (2), V cr |e is inversely proportional to ( L / r ) , where
linking small-end and big-end. The reduction of cross
section of shank brings a light conrod but increases the L / r is called as slenderness ratio. It tells that a thinner
possibility of buckling failure as well therefore the and longer structure will buckle easier.
buckling analysis in the early design phase has to be
carried out.

The most buckling studies for the automobile structures

have been performed for chassis or frames of the
vehicle [1,2]. However a buckling analysis for the conrod
has been not treated since the end conditions are hardly
defined and sometimes the cross section of shank is not
constant from the small-end to big-end.

We have successfully eliminated the error in Merchant-

Rankine formula by using FEA (finite element analysis)
and a subspace iteration method [6] in this study. The Fig. 1 Effective length factor K for various cases
modified Merchant-Rankine formula developed here
 „ The moment of inertia is not clearly defined because
of non-uniformity of shank geometry.
When the slenderness ratio is smaller than the
reasonable value of Euler’s equation (e.g. 60.5 for „ The previous formulas do not involve the actual
structure beam), a plastic behavior occurs before elastic boundary conditions of moving conrod.
buckling. In this case, Euler’s equation considering only
elastic stiffness and inertia moment cannot be used. In „ K is hard to be defined because of the differences
order to overcome this restrictions, Merchant-Rankine of shapes in front-rear direction and side direction of
formula includes the plastic part to Euler’s buckling engine.
equation [3,4] and the critical elastoplastic buckling load
is given as equation (3) [5]. „ The buckling behavior is affected by the large
geometric gradient along the connection area of the
1
ª§ S 2 EI · 1 º small-end and big-end.
Pcr «¨¨ ¸
2 ¸
  A u V y 1
»
«¬© ( KL) ¹ »¼ Consequently Pcr | e of Merchant-Rankine formula has
(3) to be modified for the buckling estimation of conrod. In
1
ª§ 1 · § 1 ·º this study, the method to evaluate Pcr | e is developed by
«¨¨ ¸¸  ¨ ¸
P | ¨ P | ¸» using FEA and the proposed method is verified by
¬«© cr e ¹ © cr p ¹¼» experiments.

The first term of equation (3) in the right side Pcr | e is
the elastic term given by Euler’s equation and the
second term Pcr | p is the plastic term derived with yield
strength of material Vy and cross section area A . As
the slenderness ratio decreases Pcr of equation (3) is
close to the yield load, and as it increases Pcr is close to
the elastic buckling load. An example of these trends is
shown in Fig. 2 when K 1 .
MODIFIED MERCHANT-RANKINE FORMULA
The critical buckling load Pcr is calculated with
Merchant-Rankine formula of equation (3). However the
elastic term Pcr | e is estimated by solving eigen value
analysis which is obtained from FEA and subspace
iteration method not by the substitution of each values.
The boundary conditions for FEA are shown in Fig 3 for
the determination of Pcr | e of conrod.

Fig. 2 An example of trends of Merchant-Rankine formula

Fig. 3 Boundary conditions of conrod for buckling analysis

Even Merchant-Rankine formula is able to treat smaller

slenderness ratio, it gives reasonable results only under
the conditions of uniform cross section, negligible friction
and trifling pin size. For conrod, it seems to be K 1 in
Fig. 1 since the small-end and big-end are respectively
linked with piston pin and crankshaft. However the value
of K of conrod cannot be simply defined so that
Merchant-Rankine formula is not acceptable. The
reasons are as follows:
The maximum compressive load due to ignition pressure
is applied on the piston pin assumed as a rigid body.
The movement in the front-rear direction of engine is
limited due to the assembly of piston to small-end and
crankshaft to big-end, hence the center points of small-
end and big-end are fixed in z-direction. It prevents the
rigid body motion during FEA as well.
Since the piston moves only along the cylinder liner of
engine, the displacement boundary of piston pin is free
only in y-direction. Although the crankshaft pin is rotating
during engine running, the crankshaft is treated as fixed
to the all directions because the buckling occurs only at
the instant time of ignition. The friction coefficients are
assumed as zero on the inner surfaces of small-end and
big-end, where the oil supplies. If a friction exists, the
compressive load due to ignition will be distorted and the
buckling behavior may not be simulated correctly.
APPLICATIONS
As an example, the critical buckling load is predicted for
a conrod by the modified Merchant-Rankine formula
explained above. The shank area is 266.3 mm2 and the
yield strength of conrod is 530 MPa.
ESTIMATION OF CRITICAL BUCKLING LOAD
The maximum compressive load of the conrod is 64.8kN
under maximum torque condition. The commercial FEA
software HYPERMESH[7] and ABAQUS[8] are used for
modeling and solving respectively. After ABAQUS
calculates the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the
structure under the given boundary conditions, Pcr | e is
obtained as the multiplication of eigenvalue to the
maximum compressive load.
The conrod shape and its buckling mode are shown in
Fig. 4. The eigenvalue was 46.2 and then the critical
elastic buckling load Pcr | e is calculated as 2994 kN.
Fig. 4 Buckling behavior of conrod
Taking the shank area (266.3 mm2) into account, it is
easily found that the stress of shank (about 11GPa) is
much higher than the yield strength of the conrod. That
means the conrod will show plastic behavior before
buckling and the buckling cannot be predicted only with
elastic terms. Therefore the plasticity has to be involved
in buckling analysis as Merchant-Rankine formula did.
From equation (3), the plastic term Pcr | p = 141.1kN
which is simply calculated with shank area and yield
strength of the material. Finally the critical buckling load
Pcr = 134.8kN. To evaluate the buckling possibility BSF
is defined here as equation (4). The BSF is 2.08 in this
case.
Pcr
BSF . (4)
Pmax
VERIFICATION EXPERIMENT
In order to verify the modified formula, buckling
experiments were performed. The fixtures are installed
to the loading equipment (INSTRON 4208) shown in
Fig.5. A machined circular shaft for crankshaft and an
actual piston pin were respectively inserted to the big-
end and small end of conrod specimen, after oil is
rubbed on the shaft and pin to minimize the friction.
Then the specimen is compressed with the speed of
0.01mm/sec. Strain gages are attached on the shank to
the up-down and left-right directions respectively to
recognize the instance of buckling. At the moment of
buckling the structure suddenly looses its stability.
Therefore while monitoring the gage signal the change
of strain gradient is regarded as a buckling moment. The
frequency of receiving signals was 10Hz.
Fig. 5 Experimental setup of conrod buckling for verification
The buckling failure mode from the experiment (Fig. 6)
was front-rear direction of engine and it shows a good
relationship with the simulation result (Fig. 4). As shown
in Fig. 7 and 8, the gradients of strain and load signal
changes at the same time. The moment is indicated with
an ellipse. The load at this moment is recorded as the
critical buckling load and the experiment results of three
specimens are listed in table 1. The percent error
between the simulation and experiments was below 7%,
and the modified Merchant-Rankine formula proposed
here clearly verified with the experiments.
 Percent error to
Measured Measured
simulation
Specimen strain at buckling
result
number buckling load
(134.8 kN)
(mm/mm) (kN)
(%)
#1 0.0072 138.0 2.4%
#2 0.0071 143.9 6.8%
#3 0.0069 135.6 0.6%
Table. 1 Comparison of measurement results and the simulation

BUILDING BUCKLING SAFETY FACTOR GUIDELINE

A reliable guideline of simulation results surely reduces

the time and efforts in early design phase. The method
verified in previous section is applied to several conrod
Fig. 6 Buckling failure of conrod in order to build the guideline of BSF . The six different
types of conrods were selected, and these conrods were
tested in the actual engine running test as well to
increase the reliability of the guideline. D-1, D-2, and D-3
are of diesel engines and G-1, G-2, and G-3 are of
gasoline engines. The buckling modes are shown in Fig.
9 and the BSF s for the conrods in Fig. 10. The reason
of their different modes in Fig. 9 is the difference of the
the moment of buckling
geometric gradient along the connection area of the
small-end and big-end.

Fig. 7 Measurement graph of strain (in unit of voltage) of specimen 1

(a)

(b)
Fig. 8 Measurement of critical buckling loads of specimens
Fig. 9 Buckling behaviors of diesel engine conrods (a) and gasoline
engine conrods (b)

Fig. 10 BSF s (buckling safety factors) of conrods to build guideline
All conrods except G-3 passed the engine running test
without buckling failure. The actual BSF guideline will
lie between the value of G-1 and G-3, but BSF value of
G-1 is selected as a conservative guideline. The
optimizations of conrod shape or weight can be
achieved with the BSF guideline developed here.
CONCLUSION
The conclusions in this study are summarized as
followings;
1. Merchant-Rankine formula having been used in
automobile industry is acceptable for the ideal beam
structure with a uniform cross section and simple end
conditions. Therefore the shank of connecting rod of
engine tends to be over-designed when this formula is
used for the buckling analysis of conrod.
2. Since Merchant-Rankine formula is not suitable for
the connecting rod because of the difficulty in defining
the end conditions and the geometry change in the
shank. Modified Merchant-Rankine formula is developed
here to evaluate more exact critical buckling load using
FEA and a subspace iteration method.
3. The modified method predicts more reliable critical
buckling load by considering the realistic geometry of
connecting rod and the engine running condition.
4. The developed method here was verified by buckling
experiments and the prediction result by the method
quantitatively agrees well with the experiment results.
The percent error between the simulation and
experiments was 6.8% in maximum and 3.2% in
average.
5. BSF (buckling safety factor) is defined to evaluate
the buckling possibility. In order to build a design
guideline of buckling failure of connecting rod, the
method was applied to several connecting rods. The
engine running tests were performed as well for the
increases of the reliability of guideline.
6. The guideline established here will be used in the
shape and weight optimization of connecting rod in the
early design stage.
REFERENCES
1. Kohei,N., Masataka,M., Kenji,T., “Analysis of
Compressive and Bending Collapse of the Vehicle
Structure”, SAE paper 2002-01-0680, SAE,
Michigan, USA, 2002
2. Jian,P.L., Golam,N., Gibson,R., “Computational
Simulation of Adhesively Bonded Aluminum Hat
Sections Under Plastic Buckling Deformation”, SAE
paper 2000-01-2703, SAE, Michigan, USA, 2000
th
3. Hibbeler,R.C., Mechanics of Materials , 4 edition,
Prentice Hall , Upper saddle river, USA, 2000
4. Timoshenko,S.P., Goodier,J.N., Theory of Elasticity,
3rd edition, Mcgraw-Hill, 1970
5. Jaspart, J.P., “Extending of the Merchant-Rankine
Formula for the Assessment of the Ultimate Load of
Frames with Semi-rigid Joints”, J. Construct. Steel
Research Vol.11 p283-312, 1988
6. Bathe,K.J., Wison,E.L., “Large Eigenvalue Problems
in Dynamic Analysis”, J.Engrg.Mech, Vol 10 p249-
256, ASCE, 1972
7. Altair® Hypermesh® Introduction to FEA, Pre-
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