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The minimum door closing speed is an important target in vehicle door design. Engineers need a proper method to evaluate the door closing speed during the design phase. Analytical approaches are presented to solve the difficult issues in analyzing the minimum door closing speed. First, the weather strip is simplified into a discrete model with several spring elements. This method does not need to use 3-D contact analysis for the weather strip and can save computing time with acceptable accuracy. Second, the minimum closing speed is solved by using the energy equation which needs one iteration only. The method has high efficiency and can be used to evaluate the door closing speed effectively during the design phase.

Rubber bushing is used in vehicle suspension systems and plays important roles as connection, mounting, or vibration isolation. To study rubber bushings, one method is to acquire parameters of the constitutive models of rubber from tests of material sample, and to obtain stiffness curves by simulation. Generally, the low-cost uni-axial tension or compression test is used for this method. But parameters from these uni-axial tests are not accurate enough and only part of the properties is represented. To get more accurate parameters, other costly tests and special equipments will be needed. Another method is to directly test stiffness of rubber bushing parts in six loading directions. The stiffness can also be approximated by using empirical formulas with dimensions of bushings. This method simplifies the bushing model and is limited. A new approach is proposed in this paper. First, radial and axial stiffness tests of rubber bushing are conducted and stiffness curves are acquired.