Fatigue Life Analysis of Undercarriage of Amphibious Excavator

Fatigue Failure is one of the most common failure modes of materials and other structures. Failure
Phenomena occur when a material is subjected to fluctuating stresses and strains, which lead to failure
due to damage accumulation1
1
“A Review on Fatigue Life Prediction Methods for metals,” Advances in Materials Science and
Engineering Volume 2016 Article ID 9573524, E. Santecchia, A.M.S. Hamouda, F. Musharavati, E.
Zalnezhad, M.Calbibbo, M. El Mehtedi and S. Spigarelli

Fatigue Damage is among the major issues in engineering because it increases with the number of
applied loading cycles in a cumulative manner, and can lead to fracture and failure of the considered
part…

The fatigue life prediction model uses the combination of damage evolution rule and criteria based on
the stress/strain of components.

To determine the optimum life of the undercarriage of the amphibious excavator, this study employs
fatigue failure analysis and to use it as basis for the rectification of some of the problems in design of the
said structure and to determine the most efficient and effective replacement material and replacement
period.

3D modelling and stress simulations where implemented as a preliminary procedure followed by Design
and Structure configurations conducted using Modern software programs (AutoCad and AutoDesk
Inventor2013). In addition, the fatigue life computations were based on studies conducted by (insert
studies) which has readily available data on High Density Polyethylene and Ultra High Molecular Weight
Polyethylene. This does not further discuss data gathering based on actual tests (tensile, etc) due to the
lack of Facilities and measuring devices (insert here). Thus, the optimum life that can be computed is a
range of maximum and minimum life of the undercarriage.