Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2018, Vol. 10(3) 1–12
Ó The Author(s) 2018
Fatigue damage analysis and life DOI: 10.1177/1687814018767249
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
prediction of e-clip in railway fasteners
based on ABAQUS and FE-SAFE

Xiao Hong1,2 , Guo Xiao1, Wang Haoyu3, Ling Xing1 and Wu Sixing1

Abstract
This article used a combined solution of ABAQUS and FE-SAFE to evaluate the performance and predict the fatigue life
of the e-clip (a widely used e-clip in the railway system) under cyclic loading. With the proposed methods, the fatigue life
analysis of the e-clip has been performed under 12 working conditions. The results show that the inside of the rear arch
has the shortest fatigue life and it is therefore the most critical part, which is proved by the field observation. Another
conclusion is that the insertion depth of the rear arch into the cast shoulder (short of the insertion depth) and the clip
deflection are two of the most important parameters to the fatigue life. The mismatch of the two parameters may cause
e-clip fractures. Finally, after optimization of the fatigue life analysis and energy analysis for the e-clip, it is suggested for
the installation of e-clips that the clip deflection should be within 10–12 mm and the gap from rear arch to cast shoulder
should be within 3–9 mm.

Keywords
E-clip, fatigue life analysis, life prediction, insertion depth, clip deflection

Date received: 18 May 2017; accepted: 27 February 2018

Handling Editor: Ismet Baran

Introduction of trains. The fatigue analysis of the fastening system

has been conducted by many researchers. J Smutny4
Since the material fatigue failure exists widely in a vari- analyzed the dynamic behavior of the fastening system
ety of engineering structures, the method to mitigate and studied the fatigue mechanism of fastening system
the material fatigue damage as well to predict and in the frequency domain. X Zhao et al.5 studied the
extend the service life has been a focus issue in many response of fastening system under the dynamic wheel–
technical researches. For railway track, the fastening rail contact forces in high frequency. JA Casado et al.6
system, as one of the most important components of conducted the fatigue tests of the fastening system
track structure, is to provide flexibility for the track and proposed a model together with the suitable
structure and to maintain a good track geometry, which
is crucial for the stability and security of train opera-
tions. The fastening system with e-clip is widely used in 1
Beijing Key Laboratory of Track Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University,
railway system and urban transit system1–3 due to its Beijing, China
advantages such as easy installation and removal, high 2
School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China
3
elasticity, and good capability to adjust the gauge and Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
track height.
Corresponding author:
In recent years, the e-clip fractures appear rather fre- Xiao Hong, School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Room
quently in part of Beijing subway lines, which is so crit- 805, No.3 Shangyuancun, Haidian District, Beijing 100044, China.
ical that has a direct impact on the operational safety Email: [email protected]

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open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 1. The material properties of the fastening clip. example, C x Altınok,24 L Zou and T Center,25 and HO
26
Alil have used ABAQUS and FE-SAFE to analyze
Tensile Yield strength, Elongation Cross-sectional metal fatigue. S Wang et al.27 have used this method in
strength, ss (MPa) rate, reduction
sb (MPa) d10 (%) rate, C (%) highway pavement reflection crack analysis and nonme-
tal fatigue life analysis.
1274 1176 5 25 The fracture of the e-clips, under the long-term train
load, is a typical metal fatigue failure, but at the same
time, the fatigue damage of the fastener is different
from that of conventional metal fatigue. The main rea-
parameters which can identify the fatigue process. son is that the fastener is not only under the dynamic
S Mohammadzadeh et al.7 conducted the stress-based load of constant pressure, bending, shear, torsion, and
fatigue reliability analysis of the Vossloh spring clip other complex changes but also under the train axle
type SKL14 under traffic loads. J Sadeghi et al.8 stud- load, speed, and other changes in the different fatigue
ied the influences of train speed and axle loads on life responses. Based on this consideration, the FE-SAFE
cycle of rail fastening clips (Vossloh and Pandrol) and WORKS is a fatigue analysis software which has inter-
proposed that increases in axle loads cause substantial faces with many finite element software and post-pro-
increases in the clip plastic deformations; train speeds cessors. FE-SAFE module uses the advanced single
have less influence on the deflection. biaxial fatigue calculation method, which allows to cal-
T Deshimaru et al.9 proposed a method for predict- culate the elastic or elastoplastic load history.28 Hence,
ing the fatigue life of rail clips by established the rela- the software is used to perform fatigue analysis of the
tionship between the applied loads and stress on the rail e-clip in this study. Besides, the software ABAQUS has
clip in laboratory tests. Z Yu et al.10 studied the fatigue been used to model the fastening system, with the con-
life and the critical position of the X2 e-clips, under the sideration that the two solver modules (Standard and
fatigue loading. S Zhu et al.11 studied the Vossloh e- Explicit) are good at solving the complex nonlinear
clips and concluded that the rail corrugation would problems and the post-processor is user-friendly. In
accelerate the fatigue failure of the e-clips. Z Yan12 summary, the main purpose of this article is to try to
claimed that the coarse and inhomogeneous material in adopt a new analysis method which combines the cal-
the e-clips is the main reason of the reduction in the culation of ABAQUS and FE-SAFE to study the fati-
fatigue life. W Wang et al.13 concluded that main rea- gue failure of the fastening system in the subway.
son of the fracture of the e-clips is the local stress con- Furthermore, this method can be used to predict the
centration under the alternating stress. In addition, the life of Metro fasteners in Beijing and provides an effec-
fatigue cracks caused by the poor surface condition are tive means for the analysis of similar problems.
also one of the important reasons of the fatigue failure.
J Zhang14 performed the fatigue test on the v-clips; he
found that the v-clips fractured after three million times The simulation of the e-clip
load cycles, and other scholars also studied the mechan- Material properties
ism of fracture.15 As can be seen from the above study,
most researches of the fastening system fatigue are To ensure the accuracy of the calculation, the material
focused on the details such as the material properties, properties in the fastening systems model are defined
processing technology, and the loading conditions. according to the factory index.
However, the theoretical analysis is less focused, with
the problems such as the models are over simplified, the E-clip. E-clip is made by 60Si2Mn steel, and the material
boundary conditions are unreasonable, and it is incap- properties are shown in Table 1.
able to achieve a quantitative prediction of the service As the clamping force increases, the e-clip yields
life of the fastening system. Especially, a method for plastic deformation. The theoretical elastic model is
calculation and analysis that can be widely used has not therefore not able to simulate the actual stress state of
yet been developed. As a result, it is still difficult to the e-clip. This study takes the plastic material property
evaluate the fatigue performance of the e-clip under into consideration and conducts the nonlinear analysis
actual operating conditions and, moreover, to accu- to prevent that. The material property of the e-clip used
rately estimate the fatigue life of each part of the e-clip. in the simulation adopts the theoretical elastoplastic
With the development of technology, a variety of model, which is based on the material characteristics
fatigue analysis simulation technologies have been used and the processing technology and also combined the
in the field of aircraft, cars, cranes, asphalt, and other elastoplastic model in ABAQUS. A feature of the
metallic or non-metallic materials16–23; the popular soft- material is that after the material reaches the yield
ware includes the following: FE-SAFE, HyperWorks, strength, the stress continues to increase, but with a
MSC Fatigue, ANSYS, and ABAQUS (XFEM). For strengthening elastic modulus. According to Chinese
Hong et al. 3

Table 2. The material properties of the cast shoulder.

Behavior Mechanical Poisson’s Friction

behavior ratio coefficient
Tensile Elongation
strength rate

Value 350 MPa 14% 0.3 0.15–0.25

Table 3. Material parameters of each part.

Figure 1. The theoretical elastoplastic model.
Components E modulus Poisson’s Density
29 (MPa) ratio (kg m23)
national standard, GB/T1222-2007 spring steel, the
yield strength of the e-clip is 1200 MPa, the ultimate Fastening clip 2.06E5 0.3 7800
strength is 1300 MPa, and the strengthening elastic Cast shoulder 1.73E5 0.3 7800
modulus E1 = 0.1E, as shown in Figure 1.
In Figure 1, line OA indicates the elastic stage of the
material, while line AB represents the material in the
linear strain-hardening elastic–plastic process.30 The
stress–strain relationship is as follows

Ee ðe\es Þ
s= ð1Þ
s s + E 1 ðe  es Þ ðe  es Þ

Cast shoulder. Cast shoulder is exposed to the vertical

pressure and therefore the frictional force from the
e-clip and its stiffness is high. The cast shoulders of fas-
tening system using e-clip are made by QT450-10 duc-
tile iron. The material properties are shown in Table 2.
In summary, the material properties of the e-clip sys-
tems used in the fatigue analysis model are shown in
Table 3.

Figure 2. An e-clip fastening system used in the subway.

The FE model
An e-clip is shown in Figure 2. In order to calculate and 33,864 elements. The cast shoulder is meshed as
fatigue behavior of the fastening clip precisely, the e- hexahedral elements and wedge elements, which are
clip is modeled in strict accordance with its actual size. 18,409 nodes and 15,360 elements in total including
The fastening clip model is based on automatic meshing 15,160 hexahedral elements (C3D8R) and 200 wedge
convergence; because of the complex spatial structure elements (C3D6). After many times of calculation, the
of the e-clip, the mesh of the e-clip is treated specially whole fastening clip is constructed by mesh size 2 mm;
during calculation. When dealing with a regular struc- a further increase in mesh density did not change the
ture, hexahedral meshing is more accurate than tetrahe- output variables. The ultimate model of the e-clip is
dral meshing. When dealing with a complex model, shown in Figure 3 and the mesh data for Figure 3 are
hexahedral mesh generation accounts for most of the shown in Table 4.
model development time due to geometric complexity.
Tetrahedral meshing, which can be more easily auto-
mated, has been the approach of choice to date in com-
The contact definitions
plex model.31 In this article, the cross section between To simulate the actual stress state, the contact between
the clip toe and the front arch is meshed as tetrahedron the e-clip and the cast shoulder adopts the nonlinear
elements (C3D4); the twist section between the front contact theory. To be more specific, the normal contact
arch and the clip heel is meshed as wedge element adopts the ‘‘hard contact’’ in ABAQUS, while the tan-
(C3D6); while the rest are meshed as hexahedral ele- gential contact adopts the Coulomb friction model,
ments (C3D8R). The model has in total 38,441 nodes with the introduction of a penalty friction formula,
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 3. The model of the e-clip fastening system.

Figure 4. The friction behavior.

Table 4. The mesh model data.
Table 5. The parameter of the P-S-N curve of the 60Si2Mn
Component Element type Element spring steel.
number
Sa (MPa) Nav (cycle) N0.95%–95% (cycle)
Fastening clip C3D4 (tetrahedral element) 1754
C3D6 (wedge element) 535 730 1,101,000 377,000
C3D8R (hexahedral element) 31,575 775 662,000 348,000
Iron bottom C3D6 (wedge element) 200 810 274,000 156,000
plates C3D8R (hexahedral element) 15,160 840 181,000 72,000

which allows the ‘‘elastic slippage’’ as shown as dotted is shown in equations (4)–(7), while the parameters of
lines in Figure 4. The ‘‘elastic slippage’’ means a rela- the reconstructed S-N curve are shown in Table 6
tively small amount of movement that occurs between   
the contact surfaces. When it occurs, ABAQUS can ðlg N ÞPC = Aav  ZP + t1C ng  1 Arms
   
automatically select the penalty stiffness (the slope of + Bav  Zp + t1C ng  1 Brms g lg Sa
the dot lines). By such contact settlings, the discontinu-
ð4Þ
ity caused by the bonding and the slip in the fastening
system can be solved. ðlg N ÞPC = APC + BPC lg Sa ð5Þ
The boundary condition under the cast shoulder of the
fastening system model adopts the nonlinear Cartesian where APC and BPC are solved by equations (6)
spring instead of the rigid constraints, which is to properly and (7)
simulate damping behavior of the rail pads.   
APC = Aav  ZP + t1C ng  1 Arms ð6Þ
  
Combined solution of ABAQUS and FE-SAFE BPC = Bav  ZP + t1C ng  1 Brms ð7Þ

The P-S-N curve of the smooth bar which is of 7.5 mm where N is the fatigue life and Sa is the fatigue strength;
diameter, made of the 60Si2Mn spring steel under four- APC and BPC are material constants; Zp is the per-
level strength, which has the survival rate at 95%,32 is centage function value when probability level P is in
shown in Table 5. accordance with normal distribution; ng is the number
Equations (2) and (3) are the regression based on of the samples; t1C (ng  1) is the value of the distribu-
parameters given in Table 5 tion function t when the freedom is ng  1 under the
confidence level C; Aav and Bav are the material con-
ðlg N Þav = 44:4068  13:3849 lg Sa ð2Þ stants of the mean relationship; and Arms and Brms are
ðlg N Þ0:95%95% = 39:5953  11:8436 lg Sa ð3Þ the material constants of mean–variance relationship.
The parameters of the fatigue analysis of the e-clips
According to Basquin S-N equation, the P-S-N fastening system can be achieved by fitting the 95%
curve is reconstructed when N obeys the logarithmic survival rate S-N curve to the fatigue model of e-clip in
normal distribution. The reconstructed P-C-S-N curve FE-SAFE. The elastic yield strength is 1200 MPa, the
Hong et al. 5

Table 6. The parameters of the reconstructed S-N of the

60Si2Mn spring steel.

Sa (MPa) ng Nav N0:95%95%

Nsi (cycle) e2 (%) Nsi (cycle) e2 (%)

730 11 1,218,082 0.96 484,068 0.39

775 11 546,434 0.86 238,261 0.35
810 11 302,319 0.79 141,166 0.32
840 11 185,698 0.73 91,741 0.30

Figure 5. Fatigue limit stress models.

Table 7. Fatigue limit stress models.

Fatigue limit stress models Expression ultimate fatigue stress models33 for mean stress are
 2 shown in Table 7 and Figure 5.
Gerber parabolic model sa =s1 1  ssmb
In Table 7, sf is the actual breaking strength advisa-
h  i
Goodman linear model sa =s1 1  ssmb ble to s0f ; cs is the conversion coefficient of the mean
h  i stress when R . 0.
Soderberg linear model sa =s1 1  ssmy As can be seen from Table 7, the expressions of
h  i Goodman model and Morrow model are simple, which
Morrow linear model sa =s1 1  ssmf are often applied in engineering, but the results are rel-

s  cs sm R<0 atively conservative; the results of Gerber model and
Cepeheeh polyline sa = 1
s0 =2ð1+c0 s Þc0 s sm R.0 Cepeheeh model are close to the experiment data, but
model
the former has a complicated expression and the latter
needs to first get the fatigue limit s0 under cyclic load-
design fatigue life is five million, and the axle load of ing. The conception of Soderberg model is easy to
the subway vehicle is 14 t. The stress ratio of the cyclic understand, but the results are also conservative, which
loading can therefore be obtained based on the stress may introduce larger the deviation. By balancing the
extreme of the e-clip calculated by ABAQUS. Later, accuracy of results and convenience of the calculation,
the load spectrum can be made in FE-SAFE. the Goodman model, as one of the widely used model,
In engineering field, the fatigue life of components is selected to be modified.
depends not only on the stress amplitude but also on ABAQUS, as a re-processing and post-processing
the initial stress state. Prior to the vehicle loads, the e- visualization software, inputs first the calculation
clip undergoes relative high initial stress caused by results file (odb file) of the various conditions to FE-
buckle pressure during the installation process. Hence, SAFE for the calculation of the fatigue life. Then, it
it is not enough to only consider changes in stress inputs the prediction results to the ABAQUS for visua-
amplitude when calculating the fatigue life. The mean lization after which the distribution of the fatigue life
stress should be therefore modified. The common can be seen. The analysis process is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. The process of the fatigue analysis of the fastening system.

6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 8. The critical positions of the fastening clip.

insertion depth of the e-clips and the clip deflection of

the e-clips. Under the train load, the most unfavorable
conditions are used; the vertical displacement of the
Figure 7. Vertical displacement measurement of the clip toe. clip toe is 0.52 and 21.47 mm. The fatigue life of e-clip
with the different installation states, in total, 12 cases,
is therefore calculated as shown in Table 9.
The static model of the e-clips in ABAQUS is shown
Table 8. Statistics of the vertical displacements at the clip toe
in Figure 8. As can be seen, the most unfavorable posi-
(mm).
tions are the inside of the rear arch and the connection
Vertically downward Vertically upward between the front arch and the toe part. For all the
cases, five typical elements are therefore selected at each
Average 0.29 0.93 position to calculate the fatigue life and then predict
Maximum 0.52 1.47
the fatigue life of the e-clip.
Minimum 0.08 0.59
Standard deviation 0.12 0.17

Results analysis
The distribution of the fatigue life of the e-clip in the
Case study typical cases is shown in Figures 9–17, and the
detailed results are shown in Table 10. Note that the
Case conditions fatigue life is the logarithmic value, namely, lg (N ).
According to the operational characteristics of the sub- Because of the complexity of the e-clip structure and
way lines, the fatigue analysis of the e-clip considers the the demand of displaying the most unfavorable posi-
vertical vibration load caused by the moving of the tion of the e-clip, we only show the part of the model
trains and the resonant of the e-clip caused by the rail in Figures 9–16.
corrugation. The fatigue loads are applied to clip toe In the distribution of the fatigue life, the blue zones
and the amplitudes of the displacements are applied are the dangerous positions, while the red zones are the
according to the test results, as shown in Figure 7 and safe zones. As shown in Figures 9–16, the rear arch is
Table 8. As proved by experiments, the two main fac- the most critical cross section, which is in accordance
tors that affect the performance of the e-clips are the with the fracture position of the e-clip found in the

Table 9. Cases of the fatigue analysis (mm).

Cases 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Initial stress statue The gap from 1.5 1.5 1.5 3 3 3 6 6 6 8 8 8

rear arch to
cast shoulder
Clip deflection 10.5 12 14 10.5 12 14 10.5 12 14 10.5 12 14
Hong et al. 7

Figure 9. The distribution of fatigue life of case 1.

Figure 12. The distribution of fatigue life of case 6.

Figure 10. The distribution of fatigue life of case 3. Figure 13. The distribution of fatigue life of case 7.

Figure 14. The distribution of fatigue life of case 9.

Figure 11. The distribution of fatigue life of case 4.
Figure 18. It shows that the dangerous zone is increased
when the clip deflection increases and the gap from rear
track, as shown in Figure 17. Therefore, the method is arch to cast shoulder increases and the fatigue life is
proved to be effective. therefore reduced. The fatigue life of the e-clip is the
The effect of the gap from rear arch to cast shoulder shortest when the clip deflection is 14 mm and the gap
and the clip deflection to the fatigue life is shown in from rear arch to cast shoulder is 1.5 mm.
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

results show that when the insertion depth

remains constant, the clip deflection is increased
from 10.5 to 14 mm, and the fatigue life is
reduced exponentially.
2. When the gap from rear arch to cast shoulder is
1.5 mm, the fatigue life in all cases is less than
five million times, which is the expected service
life, wherein even the highest fatigue life is
1,729,800 times. All cases do not meet the
requirements of the fastener service life.
Especially, when the clip deflection is 14 mm,
the fatigue life is only 84,600 times, which is
1.7% of the expected service life. Field observa-
tions show that the departure interval of Beijing
Figure 15. The distribution of fatigue life of case 10. subways is about 3 min and the daily working
period is about 17.5 h. The fatigue life of the e-
clip in this case is, according to the fatigue anal-
ysis, supposed to be 84, 600/(17.5 . 60 . 30/3) =
8.05 months, which means after 8-month opera-
tion, the fracture of e-clip should start to
appear. This is in accordance with the field
observation that the many fractures of e-clips
are found after 8-month operation. Again, the
fatigue analysis is proved to be reasonable.
3. When the gap from rear arch to cast shoulder is
3 mm and clip deflection is 14 mm, the fatigue
life of the e-clip is 3,233,000 times. The fatigue
life of the e-clip is 1,767,000 times, which is less
than expected service life.
4. The fatigue life of the cases with the gap from
rear arch to cast shoulder is 6 and 8 mm, which
Figure 16. The distribution of fatigue life of case 12. are all higher the five million times. Besides, the
fatigue life also decreases when the clip deflec-
tion increases.
Some conclusions can be found from the above
analysis:
The design optimization of the e-clip
1. In all cases, the fatigue life of the inside of the
rear arch is the shortest, and the rear arch is The optimization based on the fatigue life analysis
therefore the most dangerous position. The sec- The designs of the e-clip are optimized using the pro-
ond dangerous position is the connection posed fatigue analysis method. Besides, the five million
between the front arch and the clip toe, which times service life is also used as the criterion. The results
also has stress concentration. In addition, the are shown in Figure 19.

Figure 17. The fracture of the fastening clip (fracture at the rear arch).
Hong et al. 9

lgN凚 N—Fatigue Life凞 10 Thousand Times凛 Figure 19 shows that when the gap from rear arch
10 d=1.5mm
d=3mm to cast shoulder is 1.5 mm, the fatigue lives of all e-clips
9 d=6mm are lower than the expected service life, and when the
8 d=8mm gap from rear arch to cast shoulder is 3 mm and the
clip deflection is 14 mm, the fatigue life does not meet
7
the requirement, either. It is therefore suggested that
6 the gap from rear arch to cast shoulder should be more
5 than 3 mm, while the clip deflection is less the 12 mm.
In general, the insertion depth and the clip deflection
4
should be combined carefully to prevent fracture of the
3 e-clips.
N=5 Million Times
2

1
The optimization based on the energy analysis
10.5mm 12mm 14mm
Besides meeting the requirements of the pressure, fati-
Clip Displacement(mm) gue strength, and residual deformation, an e-clip is also
evaluated for the ability to store energy, in other words,
Figure 18. The effect of the insertion depth and the clip the more the energy can be stored per unit mass of the
deflection to the fatigue life. e-clip, the better the e-clips are.34,35 The energy W,
stored by the unit mass of the e-clip after the same
loading, is therefore used as a criterion for the design
of the e-clip. The equation is shown as follows
lgN 凚N—Fatigue Life 凞10 Thousand Times凛

10 h=10.5mm
h=12mm
h=14mm PD
8
W= ð8Þ
msmax
where P is the clamping force (kN), D is the clip dis-
6
tance, m is mass of the e-clip (kg), and smax is the maxi-
mum equivalent stress in the e-clip after installation
4 (MPa).
If other requirements are satisfied, the more W is,
2
the better the design of the fastening clip is. The mass
N=5 Million Times of the e-clip is 0.64 kg.28 Combining with the analysis
results calculated by ABAQUS in the previous section,
0
1.5mm 3mm 6mm 8mm with the condition that the insertion depth is within
3–9 mm and the clip distance is within 10–12 mm, it is
The gap from rear arch to cast shoulder/d
found that the clamping force scales linearly with the
clip deflection. The results of energy W are shown in
Figure 19. The fatigue life of fastening clip in all cases. Table 11 and Figure 20.

Table 10. The calculated fatigue life of all cases (1).

Cross section Element Cases (N/10,000 times)

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 Case 5 Case 6

Inside of the rear arch 1 173.73 97.31 8.46 5.45e7 3.59e6 416.87
2 175.27 98.77 8.81 5.57e7 3.61e6 323.30
3 172.98 98.12 9.11 5.80e7 3.52e6 492.79
4 174.21 97.78 8.98 6.29e7 3.78e6 366.35
5 173.38 99.17 9.24 5.47e7 3.92e6 362.83
The connection between the front arch 1 7.62e5 5.43e4 784.98 1.32e9 4.53e8 1.88e6
and the toe part 2 7.87e5 5.24e4 778.82 1.20e9 4.62e8 2.12e6
3 7.92e5 5.76e4 769.61 1.16e9 4.89e8 2.71e6
4 7.74e5 5.61e4 773.46 1.25e9 4.44e8 2.50e6
5 7.68e5 5.32e4 782.26 1.26e9 4.76e8 2.73e6
The fatigue life of the fastening clips 172.98 97.31 8.46 5.45e7 3.52e6 323.30
(continued)
10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 10. Continued

Cross section Element Cases (N/10,000 times)

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 Case 5 Case 6

Inside of the rear arch 1 6.18e8 1.69e7 4412.66 2.43e9 5.94e7 2.23e4
2 6.15e8 1.74e7 4616.36 2.56e9 6.08e7 2.82e4
3 6.37e8 1.82e7 5265.02 2.84e9 6.12e7 2.50e4
4 6.56e8 1.88e7 6067.36 2.44e9 6.27e7 2.14e4
5 6.23e8 1.94e7 4483.02 2.51e9 6.42e7 3.10e4
The connection between the front arch 1 – 1.80e9 3.40e7 – – 5.62e7
and the toe part 2 – 1.88e9 2.69e7 – – 4.64e7
3 – 2.42e9 2.91e7 – – 4.57e7
4 – 2.07e9 3.46e7 – – 4.95e7
5 – 2.25e9 3.38e7 – – 4.71e7
The fatigue life of the fastening clips 6.15e8 1.69e7 4412.66 2.43e9 5.94e7 2.14e4

Table 11. The energy W of all the cases.

The gap from rear arch to cast shoulder (mm)

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The clip deflection (mm) 10 0.1098 0.1089 0.1081 0.1073 0.1069 0.1067 0.1066
10.5 0.1196 0.1186 0.1177 0.1170 0.1166 0.1163 0.1161
11 0.1300 0.1291 0.1282 0.1274 0.1269 0.1266 0.1265
12 0.1514 0.1502 0.1492 0.1482 0.1478 0.1475 0.1471

d=3mm
suggested that the insertion depth should be increased,
0.16 d=4mm while the clip deflection should be decreased within the
d=5mm reasonable range.
0.15
d=6mm
d=7mm
d=8mm Conclusion
Elastic Energey W

0.14 d=9mm

0.13 1. With reference to other industry fatigue analysis

methods, this article established an e-clip–
0.12 refined model by ABAQUS. With the help of
FE-SAFE, this article made a new attempt to
0.11 analyze the fatigue fracture of e-clip. The calcu-
lation results have a good correlation with the
0.10 field observation, which validates the analyzing
10.0 10.5 11.0 11.5 12.0
method.
Clip Displacement凚 mm凛
2. Analysis results show that the insertion depth
Figure 20. The energy W of all the cases.
and the clip deflection are the important para-
meters to the fatigue behavior of the e-clip. The
mismatch of the two parameters may cause the
It can be seen from Table 11 and Figure 20 that the fracture of the e-clip.
energy increases as the clip deflection increases and as 3. The e-clips are optimized by the fatigue life
the insertion depth decreases. When the gap from rear analysis and the energy analysis. The sugges-
arch to cast shoulder is 3 mm and the clip deflection is tions are that the clip deflection should be
12 mm, the energy reaches its maximum, which is within 10–12 mm, and the gap from rear arch to
30.2% higher than the normal condition. It is therefore cast shoulder should be within 3–9 mm.
Hong et al. 11

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