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The concept of a Quality System’s approach to business has been employed successfully and sometimes not so successfully for several decades. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has been supplying standards that list the key elements/clauses and requirements for building and implementing Quality Systems for over 30 years. These standards are based on the relatively simple concepts of Total Quality Management (TQM), essential principals of management, and a “Process” approach. These standards have been revised several times over the years to make them more realistic and user friendly.

During this DFMEA Overview and Application course, participants will be introduced to important FMEA concepts, the basic theory behind the concepts, then discuss how these concepts can be applied to the customer's design FMEA activities. Participant activities include: reading assignments, group discussions, exercises, building Block Diagrams as a group, and beginning a DFMEA on a customer’s product.

This course is offered in China only and presented in Mandarin Chinese. The course materials are bilingual (English and Chinese). Currently in the industry, especially within China, product requirement development is more of an experience-based process rather than a scientific methodology. This course addresses this issue and provides a more process-driven method for better requirement development through the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology.  Real industrial examples are used to demonstrate how to systematically convert the voice of the customer data to engineering specifications using QFD.

This course is verified by Probitas as meeting the AS9104/3A requirements for Continuing Professional Development. Advanced product quality planning (APQP) is essential to improving the way companies develop products and services.  It is a standardized, universally accepted fundamental business strategy. This strategy is applicable to all types of organizations including manufacturing and service companies, schools, hospitals, and governmental agencies. The aim of APQP is to enable the organization to produce products and provide services focused on satisfying customer’s needs, wants, and expectations.  

Design of Experiments is a statistically based, structured approach to product or process improvement that will quickly yield significant increases in product quality and subsequent decreases in cost.  Products and processes can be designed to function with less variation and with less sensitivity to environmental factors or customer usage. While still maintaining high quality from a customer's viewpoint, products and processes can utilize lower cost materials and methods.  Specifications can be opened-up with wider tolerances while still maintaining high quality for customers.  

The Process FMEA and Control Plan program introduces the basic concepts behind this important tool and provides training in how to conduct an effective PFMEA. First, the course explains what a PFMEA is and how it improves the long-term performance of your products, services and related processes by addressing process related failures. The role of the PFMEA in the overall framework of Quality Management System Requirements is explained as well as the role of the PFMEA in the Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) process. Additionally, the differences and relationships between the DFMEA and PFMEA are well defined.

Design of Experiments (DOE) is a methodology that can be effective for general problem-solving, as well as for improving or optimizing product design and manufacturing processes. Specific applications of DOE include identifying proper design dimensions and tolerances, achieving robust designs, generating predictive math models that describe physical system behavior, and determining ideal manufacturing settings. This course utilizes hands-on activities to help you learn the criteria for running a DOE, the requirements and pre-work necessary prior to DOE execution, and how to select the appropriate designed experiment type to run.

RMS (Reliability-Maintainability-Safety-Supportability) engineering is emerging as the newest discipline in product development due to new credible, accurate, quantitative methods. Weibull Analysis is foremost among these new tools. New and advanced Weibull techniques are a significant improvement over the original Weibull approach. This workshop, originally developed by Dr. Bob Abernethy, presents special methods developed for these data problems, such as Weibayes, with actual case studies in addition to the latest techniques in SuperSMITH® Weibull for risk forecasts with renewal and optimal component replacement.

Abstract Truck platooning comprises a number of trucks equipped with automated lateral and longitudinal vehicle control technology, which allows them to move in tight formation with short following distances. This study is an initial step toward developing an understanding of the occupant injury risks associated with the multiple sequential impacts between truck platoons and roadside safety barriers, regardless of whether the crash is associated with a malfunction of automated control or human operation. Full-scale crash impacts of a tractor-trailer platoon into a concrete bridge guardrail were simulated for a specific Test Level condition according to the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) standards. The model of the bridge barrier was developed based on its drawings, and material properties were assigned according to literature data.

Abstract Commercial vehicles contribute to the majority of freight transportation in the United States. They are also significant fuel consumers, with over 23% of fuel used in transportation in the United States. The gas price volatility and increasingly stringent regulation on greenhouse-gas emissions have driven manufacturers to adopt new fuel-efficient technologies. Among others, an advanced transmission control strategy, which can provide tangible improvement with low incremental cost. In the commercial sector, individual drivers have little or no interest in vehicle fuel economy, contrary to fleet owners. Aggressive driving behavior can greatly increase the real-world vehicle fuel consumption. However, the effectiveness of transmission calibration to match the shift strategy to the driving characteristics is still a challenge.

Abstract Reliability analysis of a large-scale system under random dynamic loads can be a very time-consuming task since it requires repeated studies of the system. In many engineering problems, for example, wave loads on an offshore platform, the excitation loads are defined using a power spectral density (PSD) function. For a given PSD function, one needs to generate many time histories to make sure the excitation load is modeled accurately. Global and local approximation methods are available to predict the system response efficiently. Each way has their advantages and shortcomings. The combined approximations (CA) method is an efficient method, which combines the advantages of local and global approximations. This work demonstrates two methodologies that utilize CA to reduce the cost of crude or separable Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) of linear dynamic systems when the excitation loads are defined using PSD functions.

Abstract When commercial vehicles drive in a mountainous area, the complex road condition and long slopes cause frequent acceleration and braking, which will use 25% more fuel. And the brake temperature rises rapidly due to continuous braking on the long-distance downslopes, which will make the brake drum fail with the brake temperature exceeding 308°C [1]. Meanwhile, the kinetic energy is wasted during the driving progress on the slopes when the vehicle rolls up and down. Our laboratory built a model that could calculate the distance from the top of the slope, where the driver could release the accelerator pedal. Thus, on the slope, the vehicle uses less fuel when it rolls up and less brakes when down. What we do in this article is use this model in a real vehicle and measure how well it works.

Road vibrations cause fatigue failures in vehicle components and systems. Therefore, reliable and accurate damage and life assessment is crucial to the durability and reliability performances of vehicles, especially at early design stages. However, durability and reliability assessment is difficult not only because of the unknown underlying damage mechanisms, such as crack initiation and crack growth, but also due to the large uncertainties introduced by many factors during operation. How to effectively and accurately assess the damage status and quantitatively measure the uncertainties in a damage evolution process is an important but still unsolved task in engineering probabilistic analysis. In this paper, a new procedure is developed to assess the durability and reliability performance, and characterize the uncertainties of damage evolution of components under constant amplitude loadings.

This paper describes the development and testing of a Dynamic Vibration Absorber to reduce frame beaming vibration in a highway tractor. Frame beaming occurs when the first vertical bending mode of the frame is excited by road or wheel-end inputs. It is primarily a problem for driver comfort. Up until now, few options were available to resolve this problem. The paper will review the phenomenon, design factors affecting a vehicle's sensitivity to frame beaming, and the principles of Dynamic Vibration Absorbers (AKA Tuned Mass Dampers). Finally, the paper will describe simulation and testing that led to the development of an effective vibration absorber as a field fix.

Transport Canada, through its ecoTECHNOLOGY for Vehicles program, retained the services of the National Research Council Canada to undertake a test program to examine the operational and human factors considerations concerning the removal of the side mirrors on a Class 8 tractor equipped with a 53 foot dry van semi-trailer. Full scale aerodynamic testing was performed in a 2 m by 3 m wind tunnel on a system component basis to quantify the possible fuel savings associated with the removal of the side mirrors. The mirrors on a Volvo VN780 tractor were removed and replaced with a prototype camera-based indirect vision system consisting of four cameras mounted in the front fender location; two cameras on either side of the vehicle. Four monitors mounted in the vehicle - two mounted on the right A-pillar and two mounted on the left A-pillar - provided indirect vision information to the vehicle operator.

This paper focuses on the manufacturer's conflict in the conceptual design of commercial vehicles between highly customized special vehicles and the greatest possible degree of standardization. Modularity and standardization are crucial success factors for realizing high variance at the best cost efficiency in development and production as well for achieving the highest quality standards at reduced efforts for technical validation. The presented virtual design approach for commercial vehicle concepts allows for purposeful design and integration of new concepts and technologies on the component level in an existing product portfolio - not neglecting manufacture's portfolio requirements concerning standardization and modularity. The integrated tool chain helps to bring trade-offs to a head that exist in balancing between dedicated vehicles with best customer-relevant characteristics and standardized vehicles with the highest degree of commonality.

The suspension system of a heavy truck's driver seat plays an important role to reduce the vibrations transmitted to the seat occupant from the cab floor. Air-spring is widely used in the seat suspension system, for the reason that its spring rate is variable and it can make the seat suspension system keep constant ‘tuned’ frequency compared to the conventional coil spring. In this paper, vibration differential equation of air-spring system with auxiliary volume is derived, according to the theory of thermodynamic, hydrodynamics. The deformation-load static characteristic curves of air-spring is obtained, by using a numerical solution method. Then, the ADAMS model of the heavy truck's driver seat suspension system is built up, based on the structure of the seat and parameters of the air-spring and the shock-absorber. At last, the model is validated by comparing the simulation results and the test results, considering the seat acceleration PSD and RMS value.

A two-stage preview strategy is proposed to characterize steering control properties of commercial vehicle drivers. The strategy includes a near and a far preview points to describe the driver control of lateral path deviation and vehicle orientation. A human driver model comprising path error compensation and dynamic motions of the limb is subsequently formulated and integrated to a yaw-plane model of an articulated vehicle. The coupled driver-vehicle model is analyzed under an evasive steering maneuver to identify limiting values of the driver control parameters through minimization of a generalized performance index comprising driver's steering effort, path deviations and selected vehicle states. The performance index is further analyzed to identify relative contributions of different sensory feedbacks, which may provide important guidance for designs of driver-assist systems (DAS).

Due to recent infrastructural development and emerging competitive automotive markets, there is seen a huge shift in customer’s demand and vehicle drivability pattern in commercial vehicle industry. Now apart from ensuring better vehicle durability and best in class tyre life and fuel mileage, a vehicle manufacturer also has to focus on other key attributes like driver’s safety and ride comfort. Thus, for ensuring enhanced drivability, key parameters for ensuring better vehicle handling includes optimization of bump steer and brake steer. Both bump steer and brake steer are vehicle’s undesirable phenomenon where a driver is forced to constantly make steering wheel correction in order to safely maneuver the vehicle in the desired path.

The trace of rotavator blade is trochoidal path which depends both on tractor forward speed and rotational speed of rotavator. Since this path plays an important role in pulverization, hence pulverization also depends on both factors. In present days system, Rotavator an active tillage implements drawn by tractor is operated by drivers experience and driver set up the speed by throttling the tractor to reach the rated 540 PTO rpm mark in instrumentation cluster. Thus, there is no indication system available to farmer/ Tractor driver to operate the tractor connected rotavator at optimal forward tractor speed and rotational speed of rotavator. Thus, leading to decrease in field quality and performance.