Search Results

Automotive steering wheels, which play an important role as a human machine interface, are evolving over time with numerous integrations and innovations. Thermoplastic steering wheel, one of the innovations in recent times, offers significant reduction in mass along with part integration and styling flexibility and is an excellent replacement to traditional metal armature steering wheels. Typical steering wheels need to meet many performance requirements before they enter production. With the advancement of computational mechanics and increase in computational capabilities, it has become much easier to evaluate and optimize steering wheel performance in different ways. Instead of manufacturing and running prototype tests, steering wheel designs can be modeled and optimized virtually in various scenarios using standard finite element analysis technique, thus facilitating faster development cycle.

The automotive industry is applying the concept of modularity to numerous automotive applications. Door modules, front-end modules, seating systems and instrument panel (IP) cockpits are examples of this trend. These systems offer advantages of part reduction and elimination, assembly line optimization, inventory reduction, and sub-system level design and validation. An IP cockpit is one of the most complex vehicle systems, not only because of the large number of components, but because of the numerous build variations available to the OEM. The OEM realizes maximum benefit when the IP cockpit is assembled as a module. The Integrated Structural HVAC System (ISHS) described here was designed and developed to enable the IP cockpit to be a modular system while realizing the benefits of mass reduction, cost reduction and packaging flexibility. This paper describes the components, functionality and performance that make up the ISHS system.