BlueScope Steel (Port Kembla, New South Wales, Australia)
BlueScope Steel required fatigue assessment and design modification of a ram long travel drive bogie torque arm and torque arm bracket components. Stress analysis and fatigue assessment of the torque arm and bracket components was required to be performed in accordance with standard AS 4100 considering permanent and imposed (cyclic) motor torque loads, with iterative design modifications required to achieve a minimum design fatigue life of 1.5 x 106 cycles and to mitigate bolt loosening at the torque arm-main bogie frame bolted joint.
What we did:
- Performed stress analysis (structural FEA) of ram long travel drive bogie (incorporating torque arm and torque arm bracket components) considering permanent and imposed (motor torque) load combinations.
- Determined peak component deflections/stresses, welded joint/bolted connection capacities and verified structural integrity of existing and modified designs.
- Performed fatigue assessment of the torque arm and bracket components considering structural FEA derived stress range values (at peak stress locations) from imposed (cyclic) motor torque loads.
- List Item
Outcome:
Avesta Consulting successfully verified that the proposed torque arm design modifications would enable the torque arm, torque bracket and bogie components to exceed the minimum design life requirement of 1.5 x 106 cycles specified by BlueScope.
