Virtual vibration test rig for fatigue analysis of dozer push arms

Abstract To obtain accurate fatigue life results for construction machinery components, acquiring load spectra is crucial, as their authenticity and validity directly determine the precision of the analysis. In working conditions, component attitudes change continuously, but they remain static on the vibration test rig (VTR), so the acquired target signals should match with the actual component attitudes in the driving signal generation. This paper proposes an efficient and economical simulation‐based virtual VTR for fatigue analysis of dozers. First, the relationship between the push arm rotation angle and the cylinder stroke is established, since the cylinder strokes can be measured easily in data acquisition experiments. Second, load decomposition is used to determine the attitude relationship between virtual VTR conditions and actual conditions, and target signals are calculated based on this attitude relationship and measured data. According to the system's frequency response function, the driving signals are iterated until the system's response signals converge with the target signals. Finally, the iteratively obtained load spectra are utilized for fatigue life analysis. The results show that the virtual VTR can effectively and accurately obtain the results of fatigue analysis and has engineering application significance.