Fatigue Life and Stress Analysis of the Crankshaft of a Single Cylinder Diesel Engine under Variable Forces and Speeds

In this paper, a single cylinder crankshaft manufactured with C45 steel was used to investigate variation in stress, deformation, and fatigue life and safety factor at critical locations of the crankshaft. For this purpose, numerical analyses using ANSYS/Workbench software were performed under different operating conditions. Additionally, low cycle fatigue analyses were conducted experimentally for the validation of the numerical results in terms of the failure characteristics of the crankshaft. It was concluded that chamfers at sharp corners of the crankshaft on the flywheel side showed critical regions, indicating that the experimental and numerical results were consistent. These results suggested that critical regions of the crankshaft could be optimized for the improvement of sustainability in long life service.