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In commercial vehicles, exhaust system is normally mounted on frame side members (FSM) using hanger brackets. These exhaust system hanger brackets are tested either as part of full vehicle durability testing or as a subsystem in a rig testing. During initial phases of product development cycle, the hanger brackets are validated for their durability in rig level testing using time domain signals acquired from mule vehicle. These signals are then used in uni-axial, bi-axial or tri-axial rig facilities based on their severity and the availability of test rigs. This paper depicts the simulation method employed to replicate the bi-directional rig testing through modal transient analysis. Finite Element Method (FEM) is applied for numerical analysis of exhaust system assembly using MSC/Nastran software with the inclusion of rubber isolator modeling, meshing guidelines etc. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) results are in good agreement with rig level test results.

Linear static analysis of heavy commercial truck chassis assembly has become an industry practice during the concept stage evaluation. Non-linear analysis of chassis is rarely performed due to computational time and resource constraints. However, linear assumptions might not be appropriate for certain regions in the chassis assembly. In this paper, sub-modeling technique is applied for solving specific regions in the full chassis assembly to capture the actual boundary information for local non-linear analysis without intervention of user.

Cold formed carbon steel C sections are often employed as load carrying structural members in heavy commercial trucks. The cold forming operations employed during the making of these members generate certain amount of residual stresses throughout the sections. As the residual stresses play a significant role in determining the structural behavior of truck frame rail members, a careful assessment of residual stresses resulting from cold forming operation is needed. In the present investigation, residual stresses in frame rail corner sections were numerically predicted with the help of non-linear Finite Element (FE) analysis in ABAQUS and compared with the experimentally measured residual stress values using X-ray diffraction technique. It has been observed that the numerically predicted residual stresses are in agreement with the experimentally measured residual stresses in forming direction.