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SAE TECHNICAL
PAPER SERIES 980690

Design of Durability Sequences Based

on Rainflow Matrix Optimization
Bernhard Gründer and Michael Speckert
LMS Durability Technologies

Mark Pompetzki
LMS of North America

Reprinted From: Advancements in Fatigue Research and Applications

(SP-1341)

International Congress and Exposition

Detroit, Michigan
February 23-26, 1998

400 Commonwealth Drive, Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 U.S.A. Tel: (724) 776-4841 Fax: (724) 776-5760
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Copyright 1998 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.

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Design of Durability Sequences Based
on Rainflow Matrix Optimization
Copyright © 1998 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.
ABSTRACT
This paper describes a process of designing a durability
sequence by selecting a combination of measured events
that best reproduces a predefined loading environment.
The selection of the measured events is done by a math-
ematical optimization technique that compares, for each
channel in a multi-channel history, the rainflow matrix of
the target with that of the combined events and minimizes
their differences. These differences are based on the
fatigue related damage content of the entire rainflow
matrix or portions of the rainflow matrix for each channel.
Other histogram types like rotating moments and PSD’s
could be used simultaneously for each channel. Since
the target is also defined as a Rainflow matrix all meth-
ods available in the area of load data editing, like extrapo-
lation and superposition can be used in defining the
target. The results define the number of repeats of each
of the events that make up the target. In addition to the
design of durability sequences, this technique can be
used to obtain a reduced number of measured events for
analysis or test rig applications, while maintaining the rel-
evant fatigue life characteristics of the service environ-
ment. An example, is provided showing how this method
can be applied to the design of an automotive test track.
INTRODUCTION
In the analysis and testing stages of a product develop-
ment cycle it has become increasing important to under-
stand the service environment under which the product
will be subjected, such that a realistic durability sequence
can be defined. A primary need for this durability
sequence is that the current demands for a product can
not be fulfilled based solely on static or constant ampli-
tude test programs. For example, the creation of a
release test for a newly developed light weight compo-
nent can not be based on test programs for a similar steel
component. The test program for the steel component
1
980690
Bernhard Gründer and Michael Speckert
LMS Durability Technologies
Mark Pompetzki
LMS of North America
contains inherent assumptions that are only valid for the
unique fatigue behavior of steel.
To avoid focusing on the fatigue behavior of a material
before testing, a comparison in terms of damage can be
done using a generic stress-life curve together with histo-
grams. In addition, there are various methods that can be
employed when defining the desired service environment
(referred to as the "target"). These methods will be shown
in more detail later in this paper. At the end of this pro-
cess the result is a target, given in terms of multi-channel
histograms, which are to be reproduced in the test. In
order to achieve this result, the multi-channel histograms,
should be reproduced using well defined individual test
tracks. Therefore, the remaining question is:
"Which of the well known test tracks need to be repeated
and what are the corresponding number of iterations of
each, so that the combined test reproduces the service
loading conditions?"
The method shown in this article, named optimum
mixed track, answers this question and thus allows the
use of well defined test tracks when reproducing the ser-
vice environment of a product.
THE OVERALL PROCESS
The overall process for the optimum mixed track method
is shown in figure 1. The process starts with a data
acquisition that describes the customer usage. Ideally,
this data acquisition is done using actual customer usage
as opposed to proving ground events. This data is then
analyzed and converted into histograms [1-4]. Synthesis
techniques are used to expand the measured data to rep-
resent the service environment for the life of the product
(i.e. the target). Finally, a combination of test tracks are
selected using an optimization technique [5,6], such that
the durability sequence matches the target for each of
the measured channels.
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time signals
load data analysis
histograms
load data
synthesis
Figure 1. flow diagram, from data acquisition to test-signal synthesis
EXAMPLE – To give the reader an idea of the practical
benefits of this method, a short example is provided.
Assume, that a newly developed suspension component
is to be released. The relevant input loads have been
identified as the three orthogonal forces, acting at a spin-
dle (lateral, longitudinal and vertical forces) together with
the applied torque acting through the shaft drive. Several
measurements have been done with a prototype and the
resulting information has been reduced to three rainflow
matrices (one for each wheel force) and a rotating
moment histogram for the torque. The histograms have
been modified using editing, superposition and extrapola-
tion to achieve the target of the release test, where this
target is defined by three rainflow matrices and rotating
moment histogram. The goal is to define the shortest
durability sequence, which fulfills the release criteria. By
taking into account all relevant test tracks from the prov-
ing grounds, the result of the optimized mixed track will
be, for example:
release test = 22 iterations of "Cobble Stones”
+ 8 iterations of "potholes”
+17 iterations of a "race track”
The requirement of this release test will be fulfilled (3
wheel force rainflow matrices plus a rotation moment his-
togram of the shaft drive) by successful completion of this
durability sequence on the proving ground or on a test
rig.
BENEFITS OF OPTIMIZED MIXED TRACKS – Some
applications of this method are:
1. In situations where durability aspects are of primary
concern and the frequency content can not be
ignored, the resulting durability sequence will be
close to the target conditions in terms of durability
and frequency content. The targets are matched
2
test
tracks
optimum track mixing
target
explicitly in terms of durability content and fulfilled
implicitly in terms of frequency, since each test track
contains a specific spectral content.
2. Historically when creating a durability sequence only
the damage for the entire rainflow matrix was taken
into account. However, this assumes that the type of
cycles are not important only their total damage
potential. This can lead to unwanted influences as a
result of the test process and should be avoided.
3. When there is a technical or financial need to per-
form a proving ground test on road surfaces that are
not part of a companies standard test schedule. A
new durability sequence can be established for the
new road surfaces or for the use of a different test
facility.
For some conditions, alternatives to this method can be
used. For example, when testing a component that is
insensitive to changes in frequency or loading sequence,
the loading signal can be generated using a standard
reconstruction technique.
DEFINING THE TARGET
The first step for the optimum mixed track method is to
define the target, that is, the service environment for the
product of interest. In order to define the target, a mea-
surement of time data is performed and stored on a com-
puter. Next, histograms are computed from the time
signals, as for example, range-pair histograms, level
crossing histograms or rainflow matrices, as well as,
rotating moment histograms and time at level histograms.
In terms of these histograms, all analysis and synthesis
will be done using damage as the comparison criteria.
The main techniques used to modify the histograms are
superposition and various kinds of extrapolation. These
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techniques define the set of operations that may be 3. costs: a factor relative to cost can be associated with
required to define the target. each test track. As for example, the cost of renting a
race track can be compared against the expense of
In additional, there is a possibility to specify a target in
using a proving ground.
terms of its frequency characteristics, which will be taken
into account when selecting the optimum durability There are two main techniques for the optimization pro-
sequence. A given target PSD could be optimized in par- cess as described below:
allel with damage related histograms.
a. all target histograms will be met exactly or exceeded
SUPERPOSITION – There is often a need to combine b. all target histograms will be matched as closely as
many single tracks or multiple repeats of the same track possible
into one histogram that encompasses all of the track seg- Mathematically this can be described by the following
ments. Superposition is used to complete this operation equations, where L defines the length (or cost) of the
while incorporating the special characteristics of the his- basic track, C defines the constraints, and D defines the
tograms. key values in terms of a durability parameter. The key val-
ues can be defined as a single value for a entire histo-
EXTRAPOLATION – For situations where an event is gram or for each subset of a histogram.
defined with multiple measurements there may be a
requirement to extract additional information using statis- Method a)
tical methods. Extrapolation can be performed in terms of characteristic function: minimize Σ αi Li
length and severity. For example, an extrapolation can be requirement: Σ αi Di ≥ DT
performed from a measurement of 15 repeats of a test additional constraints: βi ≤ Ci ≤ δi
track to a histogram that represents 1000 repeats. Method b)
Other situations may require the statistical analysis of characteristic function: minimize || Σ αi Di - D T ||
many measurements, where one parameter, e.g. the requirement: βi ≤ αi Li ≤ δi
driver, is varied. The severity or quantile extrapolation [7] additional constraints: βi ≤ Ci ≤ δi
is a method which can calculate the histogram of the where subscript T identifies the target, subscript i identi-
most severe 1% driver from a number of representative fies the basic tracks, α is the number of repeats and β
measurements of different drivers. and δ are defined based on the requirements for a partic-
Another application is in estimating histograms for a test ular application.
track for which the damage potential is only achieved in
one out of hundred cases. That is, the method can create METHOD
a number of histograms that satisfy the damage require-
ments. The following sections will describe the method of opti-
mized mixed tracks together with its objectives and
In summary, there are a number of methods for manipu- assumptions. The benefits of the method will be shown in
lating histograms that are not available when working reference to the previous example.
only in the time domain. These methods are very useful
in defining the target. BASIC INFORMATION – The starting point is defined as:

MATCHING THE TARGET WITH OPTIMIZED
MIXED TRACKS
The method as described is concerned with one pur-
pose, to match the target histogram in an optimized way.
The optimization can be done in several ways, some of
which are described below:
1. distance and time: the optimization can search for a
solution that minimizes time or distance. Saving time
or mileage reduces costs for both proving ground and
rig testing.
2. constraints: the number of repeats of a single track
can be bounded. For example, there should be a
minimum of 6 iterations of the race track and not
more than 50 iteration of the “Cobble Stone” circuit.
1. there is a multi-channel (d dimensional) target histo-
gram given in terms of rainflow matrices, or range-
pair, level crossing, time at level or rotation moment
histograms:
KT = (KT(1), KT(2),...,KT(d))
where K (i) represents the type of histogram for the ith
histogram channel.
For the example: d = 4
KT(1) is the target rainflow matrix of the lateral force,
KT(2) is the target rainflow matrix of the horizontal
force,
KT(3) is the target rainflow matrix of the vertical force,
and
KT(4) is the target rotating moment histogram of the
shaft drive.

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2. there are b Basic Test Tracks with several time sig-

nals measured at the same time.:
Basic Track 1 : Z1(t) = (Z11(t), Z21(t),...),
... ,
Basic Track b : Zb(t) =(Z1b(t), Z2b(t),...)
For the example:
Z11(t) is the time signal of the lateral force of track 1,
Z21(t) is the time signal of the horiz. force of track 1,
Z12(t) is the time signal of the lateral force of track 2,
etc.
3. the Basic Track can be transformed to histograms of
the same format as those for the target histograms.
i.e. the counting method V(1) transforms the basic
time signal of channel 1 into a histogram that is of the
same form as the target histogram KT(1), (For exam-
ple, V(1) ( Z2(t) ) = K(1)2).
For the example:
V(1), V(2), and V (3) is the rainflow count method Figure 3. target histogram longitudinal
applied to time history channels 1, 2, and 3 and V(4)
is the method for calculating rotating moment histo- APPROACH – The objective that V(1)(M) matches KT(1)
grams. in an optimum way, needs to be defined in more detail.
When examining this objective, one recognizes that the
OBJECTIVE – The objective of this method is to deter- optimized rainflow matrix can not be based on matching
mine the optimum combination of the basic test tracks, each bin to the target matrix. This is because small
that match the target in terms of the durability content of changes during the measurement process results in
the histogram for each channel. Therefore, the method cycles that randomly move from one bin to neighboring
searches for the mixed test track (M) bins. Therefore, a more global view of the rainflow matrix
is needed, and the optimization is done not with single
M = α1ŸZ 1 + α2ŸZ2 + ... + αbŸZb
bins, but with areas in the rainflow matrix. To determine
where α 1, α2, ... αb are the number of repeats such that these areas and to evaluate the differences of each area
V(1)(M) optimally matches K(1), V(2) (M) optimally between the optimized and target matrices is an impor-
matches K (2), etc., based on one of the two objective tant aspect of the method. The result of this evaluation is
functions described previously. a set of characteristic values calculated from all existing
basic tracks and from the target. These characteristic val-
For the example:
ues represent relative damage values and are in the form
The optimization process tries to determine a mixed test
of vectors, which are the input for the optimization pro-
track, M, where the rainflow count of lateral force, V(1)(M),
cess. The result of this optimization process is a set of
matches that for the target lateral force, K T(1), etc.
coefficients that determine the mix of the basic tracks. In
additional, there is the possibility to specify several con-
straints as is common with general mathematical optimiz-
ing methods.

AN APPLICATION IN TEST TRACK DESIGN

The following section will present an application of this

method. The goal is to simulate a synthetically created
customer through a optimized mix of test tracks. The
input load channels (longitudinal, vertical and lateral
forces) are three time signals measured at the right front
wheel. Two groups of measurements were taken, a cus-
tomer measurement used to define the target and a mea-
surement of the basic tracks using a professional driver.
The customer measurements (the first group) are used
only in defining the target, while the second group of
measurements using a professional driver are used as
Figure 2. target histogram vertical force the basic tracks and hence used in defining the mixed
test track (i.e. the durability sequence).

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The target histogram was constructed based on a syn-

thesis of customer measurements on highways, country
roads, city streets and rough roads. The corresponding
time signals were rainflow counted and extended to the
desired target length using rainflow extrapolation. For this
example, the time signals for 200 km of highway driving
were extended by a factor of 100 to get a representation
of 20,000 km. The results of these single channel extrap-
olations were added together using superposition to
define the target histogram. The result is a set of three
rainflow matrices for the lateral, vertical and longitudinal
forces at the front right wheel representing approximately
24,000 km of customer loading. These rainflow matrices
are shown in figures 2, 3, and 4.
For the second group of measurements these loads were
measured for all the basic tracks, a racing track, different
types of rough roads on the proving ground and on vari-
ous types of public roads using professional drivers.
Figure 4. target histogram lateral force

Figure 5. result graphic of the first solution

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FIRST APPROACH – Initially it was decided that the tar-
get histogram should be simulated using test tracks avail-
able only on the race track and proving ground. Figure 5
gives an overview of the results, which show that none of
the public roads were used (i.e. Highway, City, Country
Road, and Rough Road all have a repeat factor of zero).
However, the quality of the result is not as good as
desired. A closer look at the results shows that there is
an absence of small cycles which leads to the poor dam-
age comparison. Therefore, some public roads need to
be added to the set of basic tracks.
Figure 6. result graphic of the final solution
DOCUMENTATION OF THE RESULTS – Figures 7, 8
and 9 show both solutions and the target histograms for
all three loading directions. The poor results of the first
approach (left) can be clearly identified in comparison
with the final results (middle) and with the target (right).
6
FINAL SOLUTION – When all the measured tracks are
used, including the public roads, a better result is
obtained as shown in Figure 6. The resulting computed
mixed test track consists of no passes on either race
track, one repeat of two of the proving ground tracks and
multiple repeats on three different public roads. The addi-
tional use of the public roads leads to a result that is sig-
nificantly improved over the first approach. It is also worth
noting that only 5 of the 21 basic tracks are needed to
meet the target histogram.
Figure 10 shows the lateral forces for the two solutions
together with the target plotted as range-pair histograms.
Also shown in the lower left part of the figure, are the
basic tracks and the customer measurements. Range-
pair histograms show the number of occurrences of each
rainflow counted load range. Histograms for the other
channels show similar trends.
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(a) first approach (a) first approach

(b) final approach (b) final approach

(c) target (c) target

Figure 7. histograms of the vertical force Figure 8. histograms of the longitudinal force

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Figure 10 shows that the poor results in the first

approach are the result of the loss of small cycles when
only proving ground test tracks are used to create the
mixed test track.
If a fatigue analysis can show that, for a given material
and component configuration, the smaller cycles are sig-
nificantly below the endurance limit for all critical loca-
tions, then the smaller cycles can be eliminated. In this
case, the first approach may be superior if the smaller
cycles could be eliminated, since it can be completed in
less time and is hence less expensive. When smaller
cycles are removed, it should be done by modifying the
(a) first approach target histograms and then re-running the optimization
process.
As with this example, the optimum solution is often found
using more than one analysis step, each with a different
process and/or different constraints.

CONCLUSION

The method of Optimized Mixed Tracks provides a tech-

nique for transforming target histograms into test scenar-
ios. The approach determines the optimum mix of Basic
Test Tracks that best match the target histograms for mul-
tiple channels. Although the optimization is performed in
terms of the durability content of histograms, the time sig-
(b) final approach
nal data is retained for testing and analysis purposes. An
example was provided showing how this technique has
been successfully applied to the design of a new durabil-
ity sequence.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank Holger Zeinert for his

assistance in preparing this document.

(c) target

Figure 9. histograms of the lateral force

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Figure 10. range-pair histograms of the lateral forces

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