The in-service condition of a vehicle eventually subject the shock absorber to unforeseen deformations due to external forces such as damping, friction, resistance forces and other factors such as poor road condition characterized by potholes and speed bumps. In this study, a vehicle shock absorber was analysed, considering the in-service condition. Using SOLIDWORKS software, 2020 version the shock absorber component was modelled with three different materials which were simulated with ANSYS software. From the simulated results, maximum total deformations of 54.286, 49.26 and 47.603 mm as well as maximum directional deformations of 53.303, 48.762 and 47.569 mm were obtained for hard drawn spring wire (A227), alloy steel (A213) and stainless steel (A313) selected as the shock absorber materials. On the other hand, maximum equivalent von-mises stresses of 1205.8, 1204.7 and 1084.6 MPa as well as maximum equivalent strain values of 0.0065269, 0.0061912, 0.0060882. From the simulated results obtained, stainless steel (A313) out of the three shock absorber material exhibited the least deformations, von-mises stress and equivalent strain. However, the three materials had satisfy the failure distortion-energy theory, and may be feasible for shock absorber application in actual scenario because the Von-mises stress obtained had not exceeded any of the material’s yield strength. This was evidence in the low equivalent strain values and the colour distribution across the shock absorber models which was dominated by royal blue colour, indicating that the shock absorber models can still accommodate multiple translated non-proportional loading or still had significant load bearing capacity. The stress-strain deformation analysis in this study can help predict and prevent premature failure, ensuring the longevity of vehicle shock absorbers.
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