In an industrial context, and in particular in the automotive industry, the systems' reliability has to be efficiently demonstrated, in a quick and cheap way. In PSA, chassis parts design is validated both by numerical calculations and by high-cycle endurance tests. Fatigue qualification methodologies are based on a specific test protocol and on an associated estimation method. In this work, at first a review of the fatigue test methodologies currently used in the automotive industry and state-of-the-art from academic research are addressed. Thus, numerical simulations are used in order to assess the reliability of these procedures and to compare their performance, robustness and cost. Finally, an efficient global methodology is developed and part of it is implemented. The whole work performed permits first to have a critical point of view on reliability assessment by testing methods. Then, it leads to a qualification strategy improvement and points the way towards major enhancements in PSA's fatigue qualification strategy.
