THE EFFECT OF GEOMETRY ON FATIGUE LIFE FOR BELLOWS

A bellows is a component installed in the automobile exhaust system to reduce or prevent the impact from engine. Generally, the specifications on the bellows are determined in the system design process of exhaust system and the component design is carried out to meet the specifications such as stiffness. Consideration of fatigue is generally an important aspect of design on metallic bellows expansion joints. These components are subject to displacement loading which frequently results in cyclic strains. This study has been investigated to analyze the effect of geometry on fatigue life for automotive bellows. 8 node shell element and non-linear method is employed for the analysis. The optimized shapes of the bellows are expected to give good guidelines to the practical designs.