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Durability of automotive structures is a primary engineering consideration that is required to be assessed at every design and development stage. Due to limitations of the analytical and experimental tools, the current practice in the automotive industry is to conduct a new data acquisition over a proving ground schedule whenever there are changes in the suspension parameters. This is a time-consuming and expensive operation. This paper provides guidelines for product teams to determine if a new vehicle data acquisition is needed when there are changes in vehicle parameters, and the corresponding effect on Road Test Simulator (RTS) drive file development. The application of this methodology to a truck with and without tuned suspension parameters is described in detail.

The Controller Area Network (CAN) provides the user with several parameters to configure the bit timing, sampling point, and bit rate. With this flexibility comes some complexity in choosing the correct values for these parameters and properly configuring the bit rate. A given bit rate can be achieved by setting these parameter in more than one way. It is also possible to incorrectly configure these parameters and achieve a close enough bit rate that will allow the system to function but not perform in an optimized manner. This paper discusses how to calculate the bit rate and how to choose some of these parameters. A set of equations were developed and used in an example to configure the bit rate for a PIC18FXX8 CAN controller.

In this paper, responses from a vehicle's suspension, chassis and body, are used to demonstrate a methodology to optimize physical test results. It is well known that there is a variability effect due to an increase of wheel unsprung mass (due to loads measurement fixturing), tire pressure, speed, etc. This paper quantifies loading variability due to Wheel Force Transducer (WFT) unsprung mass by using a rainflow cycle counting domain. Also, presents a proving ground-to-test correlation study and the data reduction techniques that are used in road simulation test development to identify the most nominal road load measurement. Fundamental technical information and analytical methodology useful in overall vehicle durability testing are discussed. Durability testing in a laboratory is designed to correlate fatigue damage rig to road. A Proving Ground (PG) loading history is often acquired by running an instrumented vehicle over one or more PG events with various drivers.