Study on the influences of effective parameters on the fatigue life of welded joint between locomotive gearbox baracket and bogie using FE model verified by experimental results

In the driving system of trains locomotives, Gearbox bracket connects gearbox to the bogie frame. This baracket is a casting part which welded to the bogie frame and is connected to the gearbox. This part suffers the fluctuating stresses during the train paths in both go and return paths. In this paper, influences of effective parameters on fatigue life of this baracket were investigated. The length of welded lines, material and thickness of baracket are the effective parameters. The FE model in FE Safe software was developed to predict the fatigue life. Factorial design was used to design of experiments. Experiments were done according to designed procedure. Results showed that, weld length, thickness of baracket and material of baracket has greater effect on fatigue life respectively. Also, in the fair choice of parameters, fatigue life became 330440 cycles which is 30.45% more than the fatigue life for initial model of baracket.