Improvement on rubber suspension equalizing beam ball joint for heavy truck
CUI Guo gang, TANG Zhi gang, FAN Zhi min, WANG Wei
(College of Electromechanical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science & Technology, Qingdao 266042, China)


Abstract: Aiming at the axial slide out problem that appeared when the equalizing beam ball joint of the rubber suspension was applied in a heavy truck driving, the structure of the original equalizing beam ball joint was improved，and the elastic material was optimized from rubber to polyurethane. Experimental study on the vertical stiffness and axial stiffness of the original and the improved equalizing beam ball joint were carried out on the bench test rig,the experimental values of the vertical stiffness and axial stiffness of the equalizing beam ball joint were obtained. At the same time, the finite element analysis model was established based on the ABAQUS finite element analysis platform, and a method of nonlinear finite element analysis method was presented. Then the finite element analysis values of the vertical stiffness and axial stiffness about the original and the improved equalizing beam ball joint were evaluated through the simulation of the bench test process. The results indicate that the element analysis results are compared with the experimental values，and the maximum difference between them is 3.55%，and the finite element analysis results are in good agreement with the experimental values. The improved equalizing beam ball joints vertical stiffness changes in permissible range, and the axial stiffness increases by about 11.5 times.

Key words: rubber suspension; ball joint; slide out; finite element method (FEM); stiffness