As one of the important load-bearing components of a truck, the drive axle housing must meet the requirements of stiffness and strength. The traditional design method uses redundancy design to meet the performance requirements. The joint design between the three-dimensional mathematical model and finite element model is adopted, and the optimal design of the drive axle housing is realized based on topology optimization and multiobjective optimization. Firstly, the static analysis of the drive axle housing of a rear axle drive truck was carried out with four typical working conditions. It was concluded that the four working conditions all operate under the yield limit of the material, and it was found that the maximum equivalent stress of the four working conditions occurs at the step of the half-shaft casing. Among the four working conditions, the most critical one is the maximum vertical force working condition. Then, based on the maximum vertical force working condition, the fatigue life analysis is conducted, and the minimum fatigue life appears at the transition position of the half-shaft sleeve and the arc transition position of the main reducer chamber. The remaining parts can meet the design requirements. The overall safety factor of the drive axle housing is mainly between 1 and 5 when operating under this working condition. Then, through modal analysis, the first to sixth natural frequency and vibration modes of the drive axle housing are extracted. Based on the modal analysis, the dynamic characteristics of the drive axle housing are further studied by harmonic response analysis and random vibration analysis. Finally, two kinds of lightweight optimization schemes for the drive axle housing are given. Topology optimization reduces the mass of the drive axle housing by 17.4%, but the overall performance slightly decreases. Then, the five dimensional parameters of the drive axle housing are selected as design variables. The mass, maximum deformation, equivalent stress, service life, and the first-, second- and third-order natural frequencies are defined as objective functions. Through the optimal space-filling design method, the experimental designs are performed and the sample points are obtained. Based on the results of experiment design, the multiobjective genetic algorithm and response surface method are combined to optimize the objective functions. The analysis results show that the mass is reduced by 4.35%, the equivalent stress is reduced by 21.05%, the minimum life is increased by 72.28%, and the first-, second-, and third-order natural frequency are also increased to varying degrees. Two different optimization strategies are provided for the design of the drive axle housing.
Keywords: drive axle housing; dynamic characteristics; fatigue analysis; finite element analysis; multiobjective optimization; response surface methodology; static characteristics; topological optimization.