Search Results

During driving, automobile and light truck occupants interface with almost all the components in the passenger compartment. These components are expected to provide not only ease of access to controls and comfort to the occupants, but also the necessary protection to decrease the likelihood of injuries during accidents. The passing of the revised Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No 201 is aimed at improving the overall safety of vehicle occupants during impact situations Amendments are specifically focused at improving the protection provided by the upper compartment components, i e, header, rail, pillar and roof trim panels, to the occupants' heads impacting at high velocities. The present paper reviews the requirements established by the revised federal legislation and the design and material options to meet the requirements, and describes a systematic approach for designing and engineering trim panels for head impact protection

Inner door panels provide the interface between the occupant and the vehicle side structure They have to meet aesthetic requirements in order to provide a continuous and harmonious flow between the forward components, i e, instrument panel and pillar trim, and the rear components in the occupant compartment, while meeting engineering and occupant protection requirements Occupant protection upon side impact has led to the use of a variety of supplemental devices sandwiched between the inner door panel and the inner sheet metal stamping The present paper discusses a different approach to meet side impact protection with a collapsible energy absorber that is molded in injection molded door panels, thus becoming integral to the panel itself This approach eliminates the need for assembly of an independent absorber cartridge simplifying the assembly of the door system and reducing the material mix that results when using thermoset polyurethane foam blocks with thermoplastic panels, thus facilitating the disassembly and recycle of the panel

The correlation of extensive engine cranking data obtained by the Coordinating Research Council (CRC) with equally extensive viscometric data obtained by ASTM has shown that the low-temperature cranking characteristics of engine oils can be predicted by two high shear viscometers, the Ferranti-Shirley and the Forced-Ball (corrected for gel viscosity). The data collected also show that the extrapolated kinematic viscosity of multigraded engine oils has little or no value in predicting the low-temperature cranking characteristics of such oils. The abilities of other viscometers to correlate with the engine cranking data are also considered.

This paper presents a progress report on the development of low temperature viscometric techniques by ASTM Section B on Flow Properties of Non-Newtonian Fluids. These techniques are based on engine cranking studies obtained by the Coordinating Research Council. Two techniques involving three viscometers are reported.