Numerical and Experimental analysis of Steering Yoke

Growing competition and inventions in the automobile sector calls for either themodification of available products or the replacement of the old ones by fresh and advancedtypes of material products. To conserve natural resources along with economizing energy, reducing weight has been the focal point of automobile makers in the current scenario. Due tothe added luxury and safety features, the weight keeps on increasing, which in turn reduces fuelefficiency and the total performance of the automobile. Therefore, reducing the weight of theautomobile is the prime need of the current automotive industry. Steering yoke is a criticalcomponent of a vehicle, which links the suspension and the steering system. The failure study ofsteering yoke assembly shows that about 71% of failure occurs in yoke part. This paper focuseson optimization of steering yoke by targeting uniformity of stress over the entire structure as anobjective function, without compromising with required strength and stiffness of the structure. CAD model of steering yoke was prepared in CATIA. Hyper Mesh was used to prepare a finiteelement model with ABAQUS solver.