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Vehicle chassis mounted cantilevered components should meet two critical design targets: 1) NVH criterion to avoid resonance with road noise and engine vibration and 2) satisfied durability performance to avoid any incident in structure failure and dysfunction. Generally, two types of testing are performed to validate chassis mounted cantilevered component in the design process: shaker table testing and vehicle proving ground testing. Shaker table testing is a powered vibration endurance test performed with load input summarized from real proving ground data and accurate enough to replicate the physical test. The proving ground test is typically performed at critical milestones with full vehicles. Most tests are simplified lab testing to save cost and effort. CAE procedures that virtually replicate these lab tests is even more helpful in the design verification stages.

In automotive CAE durability analysis, simulation of dynamic stress and fatigue life of fuel tank straps is a complex problem. Typically a fuel tank is held with fuel tank straps. Its movement lies in the domain of nonlinear large rotation dynamics. Moreover, the sloshing behavior in the fuel tank makes the problem even more intricate. The objective of this study is to investigate the fuel tank and fuel tank strap movement under proving ground conditions using the nonlinear large rotation dynamic method with RADIOSS, a commercial code. In this study, the stress distribution of the fuel tank strap can be predicted with Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler Method (ALE) to simulate fuel and fuel vapor. A commercial fatigue code, FE-Fatigue, is used to predict the fatigue life of the fuel tank straps. The analyses have accurately predicted the crack initiation sequence and locations in the fuel tank straps, and show good correlation with test.