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A compiled method of the programmed load spectrum, which can simplify and accelerate the fatigue bench test of a car body, is proposed and its effectiveness is checked by the fatigue simulation. By using the multi-body dynamics model with a satisfactory accuracy, the virtual iteration is applied to cascade body loads from the wheel hubs. Based on the rain-flow counting method and statistics theory, the distributions of the body loads are analyzed, and then the programmed load spectrum is compiled and simplified. Through comparative study, the simulation results of random and programmed load spectrum are found to agree well with each other in terms of the damage distribution and fatigue life, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the presented method.

With the rapidly developing automotive industry and stricter environmental protection laws and regulations, lightweight materials, advanced manufacturing processes and structural optimization methods are widely used in body design. Therefore, in order to evaluate and improve the pedestrian protection during a collision, this paper presents an impact simulation modeling and structural optimization method for a sport utility vehicle engine hood made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). Head injury criterion (HIC) was used to evaluate the performance of the hood in this regard. The inner panel and the outer panel of CFRP hood were discretized by shell elements in LS_DYNA. The Mat54-55 card was used to define the mechanical properties of the CFRP hood. In order to reduce the computational costs, just the parts contacted with the hood were modeled. The simulations were done in the prescribed 30 impact points.

Off-road trucks, tractors and earth-moving machines are at high risk of accidents involving falling objects or rollovers. Therefore, these machines need proper protective structures to protect operators. This study investigates the crashworthiness optimization of a hydraulic excavator cab roof rail based on an improved bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) method considering two different load cases (a lateral quasi-static load and an impact load from the top of cab, respectively). In the crashworthiness optimization problem, a weighted summation of external works done by the two different load cases is treated as the objective function while the volume of design domain is treated as the constraint. A mutative weight scheme is proposed to stabilize the optimization and balance the two load cases. Finite element (FE) model is established and two prototypes are fabricated based on the optimal design.

Nowadays, the design and development of the sliding door has been gained great attention for its easy egress and ingress. However, most studies on the kinematic and dynamic characteristics of sliding doors were based on the commercial code ADAMS, while the accuracy of flexibility in modal synthesis method and the ability of complex contact condition may not be guaranteed. Thus, a new dynamic analysis method by using the commercial code LS-Dyna was proposed in this paper to take into account the complex deformation and boundary conditions based on the finite element model. The impact force obtained from the Ls-dyna was compared with that from ADAMS when their monitoring points speed and closing time maintained the same during the sliding process. The impact force between the rollers and the guides was employed as evaluation criterion for different methods because of its effect on the roller wear and the moving smoothness in the sliding process.

The transient impact load generated by door closing is used as the input of the closing condition, which is an important part of door system investigation. In this article, the basic theory of transfer path analysis (TPA) is introduced to handle the abnormal vibration of the front-left door with the glass down stall position of a certain vehicle during the closure. The transient impact loads are discretized under the closed door and obtained using the inverse matrix (IM) method in TPA. Vehicle test and bench test are conducted. The closed door is subjected to the transient impact loads of the sealing strip and the latch on the body side. In the vehicle test, acceleration sensors are pasted on the target point and the reference point on the door to obtain the acceleration vibration response upon the door closure.

As the international community strengthens the control of carbon dioxide emissions, electric vehicles have gradually become a substitute for internal combustion engine vehicles. The battery pack is one of the most important components of electric vehicles. The strength and fatigue performance of the battery support plate not only affect the performance of the vehicle but also concern the safety of the driver. In the present study, the finite element model of a battery pack for fatigue analysis is completely established. The random vibration stress response analysis and acceleration power spectral density response analysis of the support plate for the battery pack are carried out, and the accuracy of the finite element model is verified by a random vibration test.

In this paper, an equivalent conversion method is proposed to apply the six-dimensional force road spectrum of the four-axle vehicle on the same platform to the three-axle through the axle load comparison. Further, the feasibility of the devolved equivalent conversion method is verified, and the fatigue performance improvement of the wishbone support structure of a commercial vehicle is finally achieved. Specifically, firstly, the load spectrum at each attachment point of the suspension for the three-axle vehicle is obtained through the iteration of the multi-body dynamic model. Furthermore, the finite element model of the suspension for the three-axle vehicle is established; the analysis of fatigue life for the suspension structure is performed by extracting stress amplitude through the multi-axis cyclic counting method and calculating equivalent force amplitude through McDiarmid’s criterion, combined with the SN curve of the material.

As a potential material for lightweight vehicle, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) has proven to perform well in optical behavior and weather resistance. However, the application in automotive glazing has seldom been studied. This paper investigates the defrost performance of PMMA rear window using both numerical and experimental methods. The finite element analysis (FEA) results were found to be in good agreement with the experimental data. Based on the validated finite element model, we further optimized the defrost efficiency by changing the arrangement of heating lines. The results demonstrated the frost layer on the vision-related region of PMMA rear window can melt within 30 minutes, which meets the requirement of defrost efficiency.

The cab is an essential part of a light truck, and its fatigue durability performance plays an important role in the design and development stage. Accelerated fatigue bench test has been widely applied to product development of carmakers for its low cost and short development cycle. However, in reality, interference exists generally in torsional conditions for the light truck cab when tested on the 4-post vehicle road simulation system. To solve this problem and minimize the lateral force applied on the hydraulic cylinders, the direction and size combinations of displacement release about front and rear suspensions were discussed based on multi-body dynamics simulation and fixture design theory in this paper. Through comparative study, the optimum design and layout scheme of fixtures was determined to conduct the next test procedure. The weak positions of the light truck cab were firstly predicted by utilizing finite element method (FEM) and fatigue analysis theory.

Lightweight design is a key factor in general engineering design practice, however, it often conflicts with fatigue durability. This paper presents a way for improving the effectiveness of fatigue performance dominated optimization, demonstrated through a case study on suspension brackets for heavy-duty vehicles. This case study is based on random load data collected from fatigue durability tests in proving grounds, and fatigue failures of the heavy-duty vehicle suspension brackets were observed and recorded during the tests. Multi-objective fatigue optimization was introduced by employing multiaxial time-domain fatigue analysis under random loads combined with the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II with archives.