Study of Buckling Evaluation for the connecting rod of the engine

엔진 커넥팅로드의 좌굴평가에 대한 연구

This study investigates the buckling evaluation of connecting rods used in the diesel engine through finite element analysis. The Rankine formula, which is modified from classical Euler‘s formula, has been widely accepted in automotive industry to evaluate the buckling of connecting rods. Apparently, this formula is most suitable for the straight and idealized rod shape, and over-simplifies the geometric complexity associated with connecting rods. The subspace iteration method in FEA is used to predict the critical buckling stress of a connecting rod with certain slenderness ratio. To create models with various slenderness ratios for shank portion in the rod, the automatic meshing preprocessor was implemented. Results from FEA were verified by the experiments, in which the embedded strain gages measured for the connecting rod running at 4000rpm. The result indicates that the buckling prediction curve through FEA and experiment is effectively different from the curve of classical Rankine formula.