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The sheet metal joining through spot welding is the most widely used process for automotive body building, where an average vehicle has around 5,000 spot welding points in its structure. In this sense, the spot welding project is critical to the final product performance and it must be done in a way that can assure both quality and durability of the vehicle, already taking into consideration the fact that the spot weld mechanical properties related to fatigue and rupture resistance are much lower when compared to other available welding techniques like MIG welding for example. These properties have a direct impact in the fatigue durability and crashworthiness properties of the vehicle, as a significant part of the structural resistance goes through these spot welds. With this scenario, the correct application of FEA techniques is very important to assure that the projected joints and spot weld disposition meet the product targets in terms of safety and durability.

This work aims to summarize in a single form all legal requirements that dictates the minimum safety compliance required by government edicts to any wheel manufacture to have their products available for passenger or light truck vehicle in any country around the world in the year of 2016. It is not intention of this paper compare or discuss the different requirement among the countries but indicate to the manufactures of wheels what legal edicts they need to meet in case they are willing to go overseas to explore the wheel market of other country. Before start designing wheels for passenger or light truck application, any manufacture should be sure about what the government of the new market demands for wheels when installed on vehicle axis or just available as temporary spare. Another objective of this paper is to be a short reference for new automakers to know what to demand from their suppliers of wheels before starting business with them or shipping vehicles to any new market.

The challenge of this project is to make a development of a low cost material and has a high resolution digital film to be applied through a process of injection molding plastic material the surface has an alternative finish in decorative pieces. In the current process is too large is not feasible because of the cost is the cost of being a material of high performance and is on top of plastics engineering. Now the consumer has seen the cars (Popular) with very plastic material inside, leaving the car or with a dark look much lower. This project has to change the main idea that consumer sentiment Popular car, in your pocket without adding the automaker will have a freedom in design for rapid change in appearance or individual customization (geometric patterns, images, etc …) to enhance the accuracy of the finished piece. Expected outcomes (products specific to the program): Research and defines the IMD, the printing process, forming, injection and raw materials.

This paper will focus whining noise on rear axles applied in mid-size trucks. Vehicle integration changes during development affect directly the gear noise perception, in which it may be intensified. Also, gear material and heat treatment choices for the rear axle need to be done carefully, taking into consideration the integration changes and also the driver usage. A lessons learned collection over the diverse aspects of a rear axle whining noise will be the basis of this paper.

The automotive industry demands for quality and technological innovations that enhance the performance of their products. Visual quality and corrosion resistance are also very important, even for fasteners exposed to the weathering throughout its life cycle that shall meet the performance requirements specified by the automotive industry. This paper shows how the search for new technologies leads to innovations in the already established surface treatment with a new generation of sealers for the automotive industry. This brand new technology of organic/polymeric sealer applies in water basis a single and uniform layer with low molecular weight (1000 to 10000 Dalton) in order to enhance specific properties such as high corrosion resistance, low coefficient of friction attributing characteristics of self-lubricating surface and increase in the wear resistance of the coating.

For many years the knowledge in an organization has been very well treated and protected, by a discipline widely known as Knowledge Management (KM). Despite it can be consider one of the main pillars of any automotive research and development (R&D) department, several companies do not pay attention to it as they should. Who does manage and apply it appropriately certainly has been granted with innumerous business opportunities, maximizing the usage of its resources, reducing development and validation time consumption and minimizing the inherent risks of new projects. This paper covers pure KM concepts and presents several tools and practices that have been proven very good and effective for knowledge identification, storage and usage by R&D departments.

The fuel indicator float inside the fuel tank, also called just float or erroneously, fuel indicator, is in reality a fuel level sender. It is apparently a really simple part, but it consists of a small system constituted of the float itself; the float arm articulated to an axle carrying a moving contact over a resistor; and the resistor inside a housing/flange. Its function is to convert the fuel level measurements inside the tank in suitable information to the instruments in the vehicle instrument panel. Since a few years ago, it has suffered successive changes toward the objective of improving quality, durability, reliability and performance, or even motivated by innovations in the installation environment and correlated systems, such as, emission controls, affecting the tank internal space, and highly corrosive type fuels.

Computer Aided Design (CAD) has been firstly used in the U.S.A., when the reduction of lead-time and costs, as well as quality improvements pursued by the manufacturers started to be supported more and more by the increased availability of hardware and software for both design and manufacturing. Initially, the application of electronic processing reached the shop-floor, by means of machine--tools automation, and robots. In order to effectively use this automation process, an automatic feeding system was also required and led to the idea of designing the product in such an integrated manner that would avoid or minimize the necessity of manual data manipulation. In this paper we will describe how General Motors do Brasil has been tackling this subject, by using CAD tools in the Product Engineering area, as well as the results obtained so far, including some technical details on the hardware and software used.

Body in White (BIW) torsional stiffness is an important parameter for passenger vehicles, influencing its behavior regarding Noise, Vibration & Harshness (NVH), durability and handling. A BIW with high stiffness may impact mass and cost since it would be necessary to add reinforcements and/or increase thickness of the panels with more contribution for this parameter. An OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) may have to choose an existing platform to continue a particular vehicle family and this decision will be based on mass and costs. This work aims to study a relationship between mass and stiffness of some platforms, trying to give an auxiliary parameter to help in the OEM's decision, differentiating the stiffness of the lower (platform) and upper body.

This paper came from the latent needs of the Brazilian Market for products more robust and at the same time cheaper. With these needs in mind the product development team of General Motors do Brasil have developed together with Altair Engineering do Brasil a design methodology based on the topologic optimization technology. The objective of this paper was defined in a meeting of the technical teams of the two companies: Develop the application of the topologic optimization technology on design of structural components using actual GMB models. This methodology is described on this paper with some practical examples where it was applied. One the important news here presented it was considering the casting constrains that leave to an optimal design that can be produced. The results here presented were obtained using optimization and compared with the traditional approach here defined as try-error.

The existent competitiveness in the automobile industry has been taking their manufacturers to an incessant search for methods and processes that seek the production of vehicles with quality and accessible costs to their costumers. The Vehicle Development Process (VDP) became an essential element for the success of a vehicle in the market, because the companies found out that, when concentrating their efforts during the development phase, the opportunities for product improvement will be much less onerous when compared with the costs spent when the vehicle are already in production. On the other hand, those improvement opportunities are evidently more difficult of be pointed during VDP than when the vehicle is already in production. This article aims to evaluate how the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology can be applied to the vehicle development process in order to provide significant results in terms of quality improvement, cost optimization and reduction of development timing.

General Motors Corporation has always made every effort so that our end products and processes and configuration of components could help preserve the environment. Along those lines, General Motors do Brasil started to develop a protective coating that is corrosion resistant and environment friendly. At first, this will be used for fasteners. This effort involves dramatic changes in attitude, such as our need to admit that we are responsible for managing resources and keeping our world habitable and healthy for the future generations. This study describes metallic and organometallic coatings with an increased resistance to corrosion associated to temperature, free of such harmful metals as cadmium, nickel, lead, chromium, etc. Also demonstrated here is the significance of the total friction coefficient and its composition, considering the friction coefficients inherent to the fastener threads/heads.

Basic driveline configurations offered in mid-size trucks have a standard “open” differential. Open differentials allow smooth cornering, as the outside tire must spin faster on corners as it travels a larger arc, when compared to the inner tire. This system has a main problem when traction is lost, due to slippery roads, different friction coefficients between pavements or even when the axle is submitted to a twist ditch. All of the power goes to the wheel with the least traction and the pickup is stuck. In order to improve traction on these situations, limited slip differentials were developed. A limited-slip differential will prevent excessive power from being allocated just to one wheel, and thereby keeping both wheels in powered rotation. There are several solutions offered in the market, each one presenting different torque transfer capabilities.

This paper presents the results of a study about the influence of the suspension manufacturing and assembly induced dimensional variation on the vehicle dynamic behavior for a compound crank rear suspension. A selection of representative vehicle dynamics metrics has been considered for this assessment and each individual dimensional variation has been categorized with respect to its overall effects on the selected metrics. By doing this, it is possible to identify the critical points where the dynamic behavior of the vehicle is more sensitive to the resulting dimensional variation, therefore creating a new criteria to define the appropriate tolerance control for the manufacturing and assembly of the related parts.

The automotive industry is continuously striving to reduce vehicle mass by reducing the mass of components including wheel bearings. A typical wheel bearing assembly is mostly steel, including both the wheel and knuckle mounting flanges. Mass optimization of the wheel hub has traditionally been accomplished by reducing the cross-sectional thickness of these components. Recently bearing suppliers have also investigated the use of alternative materials. While bearing component performance is verified through analysis and testing by the supplier, additional effects from system integration and performance over time also need to be comprehended. In a recent new vehicle architecture, the wheel bearing hub flange was reduced to optimize it for low mass. In addition, holes were added for further mass reduction. The design met all the supplier and OEM component level specifications.

The required hand wheel effort the driver inputs into the steering wheel during parking maneuvers is an important design factor for a vehicle, that has a strong influence on the customer's overall perception of steering performance. During the development of a new vehicle, the designer is faced by the challenge of achieving the desired level of steering effort without jeopardizing other handling characteristics, like steering sensitivity and on-center performance. The suspension and steering tuning to achieve the adequate trade-off between these different metrics is especially critical for manual steering systems, which is a very common configuration for emerging market vehicles. In addition, due to communization of architectures, it is common that a vehicle with a manual steering system must share common suspension components and geometric parameters with configurations that have power steering assistance, making this trade-off even more difficult.