STATIC ANALYSIS AND WEIGHT REDUCTION OF ALUMINUM CASTING ALLOY CONNECTING ROD USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

The less efficiency and heavy weight are the major problem for automobile spare parts. In order to that, the material replacement is a must for automobile components for better efficiency and fuel economy. The less density and good strength material, should replace by existing material for the automotive parts like connecting rod and various parts to overcome the above problem. In this paper, the 4-stroke petrol engine connecting rod is taken into consideration for material replacement. The connecting rod is an intermediate connecting member between the piston and crankshaft, its primary function is to transmit the push and pull from the piston pin to crank pin also it's converting the reciprocating motion into rotary motion. Usually connecting is made up of low alloy steel like HSLA steel 4140. In this work, the existing connecting rod material HSLA steel 4140 can be replaced by AL S355 (Aluminum) casting alloy, because this AL S355 (Aluminum) casting alloy having very good strength among the aluminum alloy group of materials and very less density when compared to steel. The FEA model can be created using PRO-E 4.0 software and it's imported to FEA code ANSYS 15.0 software. The deflection, stress, strain is obtained from FEA software. The factor of safety, weight and stiffness are numerically calculated and verified with FEA value. Finally concluded that AL S355 casting alloy material is suitable for connecting rod also it gives 34.3% weight reduction and 88% more stiffness than HSLA steel4140.