Design And Analysis of Connecting Rod Material Made By B4c Reinforced Al7075 Alloy Heat Treated Composites

Connecting rods are highly stressed members in engines; connecting rods are also called as CON rods are subjected to alternative tensile and compressive loads with inertia loads. Inertia plays a major role in high speed engines due to the fact that the higher inertia and it is neither easy to start and stop the engines. Hence the weight of connecting rod plays a major role in the high-speed engines, here an attempt is made to reduce the weight of the connecting rod by using B4C reinforced AL7075 composite material without compromising the stiffness, and also it is found that aluminum has better damping and Vibrations absorbing capabilities. The mechanical characterization of cast AL7075 composite is conducted by subjecting it to Mechanical characterization such as SEM, compression, and tensiletest, and wear test and hardness test. It is found that heat treated (T6) Al7075 composite with 9% wt B4C has the high tensile strength of 271.4 MPa, compression strength of 854.1 MPa, hardness BHN- 86.8, and low wear rate of 2.3 x 10-4 mm3 . The connecting rods are subjected to alternative axial tensile and compressive loads since compressive loads are higher than tensile loads here the connecting rod is designed as a strut to withstand buckling load, and magnitude of critical buckling load for a high speed four stroke two wheeler considered here is found to be, 389130.23 N. Using Rankine's Theory, length, width, thickness of the rod and diameter of bolts connecting end caps are evaluated in the design phase by considering the connecting rod as a strut to withstand buckling loads. The model of the Connecting rod is developed in Solid edge and Finite element analysis is carried out using Ansys Workbench. A comparison is done between the conventional connecting rod and Al7075 composite material connecting rod and found that the weight, stress, strain and deformation induced in the composite connecting rod is less compared to forged steel connecting rod.