Fatigue reliability assessment of the new design of rear suspension system of the JCU motorsport car

The objective of this paper is to calculate fatigue reliability of the new design of rear suspension system of the James Cook University (JCU) motorsports 2nd generation vehicle for the formula society of automotive engineers (FSAE) competition. Also, this paper entails preliminary and detailed design stages for the rear suspension ensuring coherence with the FSAE rules, and carrying out details theoretical and numerical analysis throughout and iterative design process. The objective of this paper to conceive and design a fully functioning rear suspension system that includes uprights, wishbones, rockers, dampers and shock-absorbers. The fabrication of specific suspension components, if not all, is a major goal of this paper. Then, in order to maintain the minimum amount of fatigue reliability at a certain value, the number of variable components is defined at each time of inspection. The results showed that reducing the time interval between periodic inspections and increasing the number of replaced components at each stage of the inspection can keep the system reliability as expected.