Feeling a little loose in the rear end lately?
Take a peek and you will probably find another broken steel, gold zinc-coated bracket. Stop your 4 month ritual to the local auto parts store and upgrade to something much better!
Introducing the new CorkSport Sway Bar Bracket!
Manufactured from high-grade 6061-T6 aluminum, these precision machined brackets are strong, durable, and look great. Plus it’s 100% designed and manufactured right here in the Pacific NW, USA. (BUY NOW)
But wait, there’s more!
Not only did we fix the broken bracket problem, we went a step further. We use 1” and 1-1/8” poly bushings to really get your sway under control. Made from 90A durometer polyurethane, these bushings are far stiffer and much more durable than rubber bushings. Polyurethane will not deform or crack over time like the rubber counterparts so frequently do.
Time to get technical!
If you have any doubts about the strength of the CorkSport brackets then let the next images put your mind at ease. The magenta arrows represent the force that is applied in the approximate direction that the bar pushes on the bracket. The green arrows represent the “fixturing” or bolting of the bracket to the vehicle.
Above is the FEA (Finite Element Analysis) result after applying a force of 1000 lbf to the steel bracket. Obviously the bracket has deformed significantly, but is also an exaggeration to show the deformation. The deformation scale factor is 16:1 (I’ll talk about this in more detail later). Now there are two key things to see from this image. 1. The yield strength of the material is ~51k PSI, but you can clearly see that the maximum stress in the bracket is ~150k PSI. 2. That maximum stress is represented by the color red. If you look back at the first image in the blog you will see where the typical fracture in the bracket is; the exact same location as the red in the image above.
Now let’s take a look at the CorkSport bracket with the same force in the same direction.
Above is the FEA result after applying a force of 1000 lbf to the aluminum CorkSport bracket. Obviously the bracket has deformed significantly, but is also an exaggeration to show the deformation. The deformation scale factor is 192:1 (Yup, you read that right). Now let’s compare those two key things. 1. The yield strength of the material is ~31k PSI, but you can clearly see that the maximum stress in the bracket is only ~26k PSI. 2. The bracket is not experiencing any yielding (permanent bending) due to the 1000 lbf.
Let’s talk about that “deformation scale factor”. In most instances when conducting FEA, the material deforms so little that you can’t actually see it. To assist in the designing process the computer program automatically scales the deformation (exaggerates it) so that the naked eye can easily see it. So what’s another way to “look” at this deformation scale factor? If the same force of 1000 lbf is applied to both brackets, yet the steel bracket has a 16:1 (small exaggeration) scale and the CorkSport bracket is 192:1 (extreme exaggeration) scale, then there is an obvious difference of strengths.
With such a huge difference, my engineering curiosity kicked in, I began investigating. The conclusion I came to is staggering. The steel bracket began to yield when a mere 350 lbf was applied, whereas the CorkSport bracket could handle 1200 lbf. This means that the CorkSport bracket is nearly 3.5 times stronger than the steel bracket!
Excited yet? You should be! Stop your 4 month ritual right now with the CorkSport Sway Bar Bracket Kit! Zoom-Zoom!
-Barett, CS Engineering
