Weight Optimization of Housing Bracket for Electrical Starter Motor using FEA

Abstract

Starter motor is an electric motor which provides electro-mechanical motion to start the internal combustion engine. The electric starter ensures that anyone could easily start and run an internal combustion engine for any passenger vehicles. Starter motor housing bracket strength and weight has been continuously a concern which may lead to operational cost high and durability life. The important causes of higher weight gain are overdesign, customer demand, casting feasibility and the operating conditions. This paper presents the design optimization methods for robust design to meet the product weight and fatigue life cycle requirements considering the manufacturing feasibilities of casting wall thickness and draft allowances with metal flow radius for the starter operating conditions. In the optimization of housing bracket, finite element analysis software was used for calculating the stress and fatigue life and then the weight was optimized. The optimized new housing bracket was proposed for new starter projects to capture new business and the design was implemented to reduce cost in productionized starters.