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With strict government requirements for automobile fuel economy and global climate warming concerns, powertrain design becomes ever more challenging and complicated. New technologies come out daily, and each component, small or large, is scrutinized for weight, cost, performance, etc. To meet these ever demanding requirements, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) becomes very critical in the product development process. It not only saves tremendous developing time and cost, but also helps discover new and innovative ideas very quickly. Digital product development process is an industrial norm nowadays. Parts are modeled in 3D in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system, and then they are passed to and modeled in a Finite Elements Analysis (FEA) software package for analysis. If the analysis results do not meet the requirements, engineers either modify the FEA models or 3D CAD geometry for re-analysis.

In this study, a finite element analysis method is developed for simulating a camshaft cap punching bench test. Stiffness results of simulated camshaft cap component are correlated with test data and used to validate the model accuracy in terms of material and boundary conditions. Next, the method is used for verification of cap design and durability performance improvement. In order to improve the computational efficiency of the finite element analysis, the punch is replaced by equivalent trigonometric distributed loads. The sensitivity of the finite element predicted strains for different trigonometric pressure distribution functions is also investigated and compared to strain gage measured values. A number of equivalent stress criteria are also used for fatigue safety factor calculations.