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Nowadays, a lightweight component design plays a significant role in both cost of a vehicle and fuel economy in competitive heavy duty truck industry. This paper describes the optimization study of an Anti-Roll Bar (ARB) bracket used in a heavy duty truck. ARB system is used to avoid rolling of a vehicle. In order to measure real forces acting on ARB links, calibration study is performed in laboratory conditions. According to this study, measured strains are correlated with theoretical strain-force curve. After the correlation study, fatigue based topology optimization is made on ARB cast iron bracket according to correlated Road Load Data (RLD) which is performed at Proving Ground. Most of the optimization studies in the literature depend on maximum static loading condition. However, many components or structures in the industry subjected to fluctuating loads when they are in service condition.

In an effort to support design and testing activities at product development lifecycle of the engine, proper duty cycle is required. However, to collect data and develop accurate duty cycles, there are not any vehicles equipped with prototype engines at customers. Therefore, in this paper, discrete duty cycle development methodology is studied to generate trailer truck engine usage profile which represents driving conditions in Turkey for engines in development phase. Cycles are generated using several vehicles equipped with prototype engines and professional drivers that can mimic customer usage. Methodology is based on defining real-world customer driving profile, discretizing real-world drives into separate events, collecting vehicle data from each discrete drive, determining the weight of events by conducting customer surveys and creating a representative reference usage profile with data analysis.