Fatigue Analysis of Dozer Push Arms under Tilt Bulldozing Conditions

Tilt bulldozing generates unbalanced loads on two push arms, which leads to the service lives of the two push arms being different. Because the push arms rotate in triaxial directions during tilt bulldozing, it is difficult to accurately analyze the fatigue life of the push arm with one specific boundary condition and loading history. Therefore, a fatigue analysis of the push arms under tilt bulldozing conditions is proposed based on co-simulation of RecurDyn-EDEM-AMESim in this paper. The control of tilt bulldozing conditions is realized automatically according to the tilt angle and blade depth. The dynamic loads of the push arms are accurately calculated in this virtual model. Subsequently, the stress–time histories are obtained to investigate the fatigue lives of push arms. Both the overall damage and the initiation positions of the cracks are predicted herein. It is determined that the fatigue lives of the right and left push arms are 7,317.84 h and 39,381.89 h, respectively. Thus, the life of the push arm on the blade’s tilted side is reduced by 81.42% compared to the other side. Additionally, experimental tests are conducted to verify the accuracy of the virtual model. Analysis results indicate that the strains of the push arms according to the virtual simulation are close to those measured in the experiments.