Tie rod is a mechanical part, which provides connection between knuckle and steering rack. Since years outer tie rods are produced with conventional rolling operation methods, but this kind of rolling edge design has more single parts, cost and production cycle time than the pressed design. This disadvantage is pushing the tie rod producer to use pressed design assembly technology. On the other hand, there are also some difficulties for pressed design during design and production phases (e.g. defining pressing parameters and geometry of closing area). The aim of this study is to reduce production scrap ratio after pressing operation, by determining optimum geometry of housing head area. In order to obtain optimum geometry, different parameters of head design (e.g. head height, wall thickness) have been investigated with FEM support. These investigation results will be compared with the test results to validate simulation method. By this way, the effects of different geometries of head designs will be more predictable before production phase and possible failure modes will be visible by simulating pressing operation with FEM. During investigation of head geometry, there are some other design parameters, which needs to be investigated as a side effect of design change (e.g. pull out load). Pull out load criteria is one of the most important and safety critical parameter for outer tie rods. After defining best parameters for head geometry in order to reduce scrap ratio, pull out load criteria will be also checked and optimized for new geometry.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Outer Tie Rod, Pressed Design, Ball Joint, Optimization, FEA
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