{"id":8143,"date":"2026-03-11T21:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T08:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesignhosting.co.nz\/motovated\/?post_type=dt_portfolio&p=8143"},"modified":"2026-07-21T19:03:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:03:05","slug":"fatigue-analysis-engineering","status":"publish","type":"dt_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/websitedesignhosting.co.nz\/motovated\/project\/fatigue-analysis-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"CAMCO Ute Deck Mounting Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

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CAMCO Ute Deck Mounting Analysis<\/h1><\/div><\/div>[vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1773216870958{margin-bottom: 30px !important;border-left-width: 3px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;border-left-style: solid !important;border-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.1) !important;}”]Client: <\/span>Camco<\/p>\n

Category:<\/span> Mechanical Analysis<\/span>[\/vc_column_text]

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Background<\/h3><\/div><\/div>[vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1773216887692{padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]Any product can and will fail, and the challenge is to eliminate or mitigate failures early before the cost of repair tips the balance the wrong way.\u00a0 CAMCO Industries were looking to increase the fatigue life of their deck mounting system and wanted to make design changes to reduce the chance of fatigue crack initiation.\u00a0 To avoid costly ad-hoc repair and warranty claims, CAMCO was looking for assurance that the changes implemented would achieve the desired life. In this case, that meant a minimum ten-fold increase in the fatigue strength was required.<\/p>\n

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Solution<\/h3><\/div><\/div>[vc_column_text css=””]A designer is fortunate if the precise level of fatigue loading and number of cycles is known! In this case, on the original design, we had a known point of failure (see figure 1 & 2) and an approximate number of kilometres to failure.\u00a0 We applied an \u2018arbitrary\u2019 fatigue load to give a resultant stress range in FEA at the point of failure and read off the number of cycles to failure from the material\u2019s fatigue curve (S-N curve).\u00a0 From this we could then extrapolate the maximum permissible stress range for a desired (and much greater) number of cycles for the improved design, given the same \u2018arbitrary\u2019 loading.<\/p>\n

From here, changes were made and assessed against the permissible stress range.<\/p>\n

The ability to make changes to geometry was severely limited spatially, but despite this, CAMCO were able to turn around recommended design changes in short order.\u00a0 Increasing the joint stiffness to prevent local bending and torsion, changing materials of critical components, and increasing bolt torques, all led to a significant increase in the fatigue strength of the design.<\/p>\n

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Results<\/h3><\/div><\/div>[vc_column_text css=””]An important point with fatigue is that a small change in stress can have a dramatic impact on the fatigue life.\u00a0 By making the changes described above, the fatigue life in critical areas was able to be increased by at least a factor of 100x.<\/p>\n

This result gave CAMCO the confidence to move to the next stage of manufacture, knowing that a significant improvement in design life had been achieved.<\/p>\n

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\u201cCAMCO took up the services of Motovated with the goal of understanding the effectivity of our deck and body mounting systems, which are the foundations of our product line.<\/i><\/p>\n

Motovated was handed a scope of work and with this supported CAMCO in understanding the mechanics of our deck and body mounting systems through the use of Finite Element Analysis and reports.<\/i><\/p>\n

The result of this partnership with Motovated gave CAMCO a much better understanding of our design and how it would perform in the field.\u00a0 Motovated delivered the scope of work on time and within budget. Communication through-out the project was first class and we would recommend Motovated to anyone wanting to make use of their specialised skill sets.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

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Pierre Bantjes, Operations Manager – CAMCO Industries<\/b><\/p>\n

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