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Engine cooling module air flows depend on package components and vehicle front end geometry. For years, in the early stages of vehicle development, front end geometry air flows were determined from 3/8 scale models or retrofit of similar existing vehicles. As time to market has become much shorter, finite element modeling of air flows is the only tool available. This paper describes how finite element simulations of front end air flows can be run early in the development program independent of any specific engine cooling module configuration and then coupled with traditional one-dimensional component performance models to predict cooling module air flows. The CFD simulation thus replaces the previous scale model testing process. The CFD simulations are used to determine the two parameters that characterize the front end geometry flow resistance (recovery coefficient and internal loss coefficient).

For over 30 years, field research and laboratory testing has consistently demonstrated that proper utilization of a seat belt dramatically reduces the risk of occupant death or serious injury in motor vehicle crashes. The injury prevention benefits of seat belts require that they remain fastened during collisions. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and SAE Recommended Practices set forth seat belt requirements to ensure proper buckle performance in accident conditions. Numerous analytical and laboratory studies have investigated buckle inertial release properties. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that current buckle designs have inertial release thresholds well above those believed to occur in real-world crashes. Nevertheless, inertial release theories persist. Various conceptual amplification theories, coupled with high magnitude accelerations measured on vehicle frame components are used as support for these release theories.

Hybrid drivetrain systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in Automotive and Commercial Vehicle applications and have also been introduced for the 2009 Formula1 motorsport season. The F1 development has the clear intent of directing technical development in motorsport to impact the key issue of fuel efficiency in mainstream vehicles. In order to promote all technical developments, the type of system (electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, etc) for the F1 application has not been specified. A significant outcome of this action is renewed interest and development of mechanical hybrid systems comprising a high speed composite flywheel and a full-toroidal traction drive Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). A flywheel based mechanical hybrid has few system components, low system costs, low weight and dispenses with the energy state changes of electrical systems producing a highly efficient and power dense hybrid system.

Extenics is a new cross discipline to study rules and methods of solving contradictory problems in the real world. The basic concepts and theoretical frame of extenics are briefly introduced in this paper. Based on the merit of extenics, the extension evaluation method was applied to evaluate the brake materials according to a five-grade criterion established in this study. Considering the results computed by the original and simplified models, the similar conclusions were made: all four brake samples, marked A - D, were evaluated in the first grade based on the calculated dependence degrees, and sample B was judged as the best performing friction material with the highest dependence degree and the lowest wear rate.

Compliance with tighter emission regulations has increased the proportion of parasitic weight in commercial vehicles. In turn, the amount of payload must be reduced to comply with transportation weight requirements. A re-design of commercial vehicle components is necessary to decrease the vehicle weight and improve payload capacity. Side rails have traditionally been manufactured from high strength steels, but significant weight reductions can be achieved by substituting steel side rails with 6013 high strength aluminum alloy side rails. Material and stress analyses are presented in this paper in order to understand the effect of manufacturing process on the material's mechanical behavior. Metallographic and tensile test experiments for the 6013-T4 alloy were performed in preparation for residual stress measurements of a punching operation. Punched holes are critical to the function of the side rail and can lead to high stress levels and cracking.

In 2006, there were approximately 23,500 rear-end crashes involving heavy trucks (i.e., gross vehicle weight greater than 4,536 kg). The Enhanced Rear Signaling (ERS) for Heavy Trucks project was developed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to investigate methods to reduce or mitigate those crashes where a heavy truck has been struck from behind by another vehicle. Visual warnings have been shown to be effective, assuming the following driver is looking directly at the warning display or has his/her eyes drawn to it. A visual warning can be placed where it is needed and it can be designed so that its meaning is nearly unambiguous. FMCSA contracted with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) to investigate potential benefit of additional rear warning-light configurations as rear-end crash countermeasures for heavy trucks.

In this paper, we present a parameter-free, or a node-based optimization method for finding the smooth optimal free-form of automotive shell structures, including global and local curvature distributions such as beads or embossed ribs. The design problems dealt with in this paper involve a stiffness problem. Stiffness is maximized using the compliance as an objective functional. The optimum design problem is formulated as a distributed-parameter, or non-parametric, shape optimization problem under the assumptions that the shell is varied in the normal direction to the surface and the thickness is constant. The shape gradient function and the optimality conditions are then theoretically derived. The optimum free-form, or optimal curvature distribution, is determined by applying the derived shape gradient function in the normal direction to the shell surface as pseudo external forces to vary the surface and to minimize the objective functional.

A new index U* for evaluating load path dispersion is proposed, using a structural load path analysis method based on the concept of U*, which expresses the connection strength between a load point and an arbitrary point within the structure. U* enables the evaluation of the load path dispersion within the structure by statistical means such as histograms and standard deviations. Different loading conditions are applied to a body structure, and the similarity of the U* distributions is evaluated using the direction cosine and U* 2-dimensional correlation diagrams. It is shown as a result that body structures can be macroscopically grasped by using the U* distribution rather than using the stress distribution. In addition, as an example, the U* distribution of torsion loading condition is shown to comprehensively include characteristics of the U* distribution of other loading conditions.

As mass reduction becomes an increasingly important enabler for fuel economy improvement, having a robust structural development process that can comprehend Vehicle Dynamics-specific requirements is correspondingly important. There is a correlation between the stiffness of the body structure and the performance of the vehicle when evaluated for ride and handling. However, an unconstrained approach to body stiffening will result in an overly-massive body structure. In this paper, the authors employ loads generated from simulation of quasi-static and dynamic vehicle events in ADAMS, and exercise structural finite element models to recover displacements and deflected shapes. In doing so, a quantitative basis for considering structural vehicle dynamics requirements can be established early in the design/development process.

Accident statistics shows pedestrian accident fatalities as one of the important concerns globally. In view of this, new test protocols for pedestrian safety have been drafted in regulation as well as in consumer group. Also as per new ENCAP requirements, pedestrian safety assessment is used as one of the four assessment criteria's (Adult protection, child safety, pedestrian safety, safety assist) in deciding the overall vehicle safety. Hence today importance of pedestrian safety is perceived as never before in vehicle development program. Basically pedestrian safety evaluation involves subsystem level (head form, upper leg form and lower leg form) impact tests representing human body parts, at specific region on test vehicle with injury limits to decide the severity of impact. In general these injuries are governed by vehicle styling, vehicle stiffness, hard points clearances from vehicle exterior like bonnet, bumper etc.

This paper presents an integrated design method for active trailer steering (ATS) systems of articulated heavy vehicles (AHVs). Of all contradictory design goals of AHVs, two of them, i.e. path-following at low speeds and lateral stability at high speeds, may be the most fundamental and important, which have been bothering vehicle designers and researchers. To tackle this problem, a new design synthesis approach is proposed: with design optimization techniques, the active design variables of ATS systems and passive design variables of trailers can be optimized simultaneously; the ATS controller derived from this approach has two operational modes, one for improving lateral stability at high speeds and the other for enhancing path-following at low speeds. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, it is applied to the design of an ATS system for an AHV with a tractor and a full trailer.

Torsional stiffness properties were developed for both a 53-foot box trailer and a 28-foot flatbed control trailer based on experimental measurements. In order to study the effect of torsional stiffness on the dynamics of a heavy truck vehicle dynamics computer model, static maneuvers were conducted comparing different torsional stiffness values to the original rigid vehicle model. Stiffness properties were first developed for a truck tractor model. It was found that the incorporation of a torsional stiffness model had only a minor effect on the overall tractor response for steady-state maneuvers up to 0.4 g lateral acceleration. The effect of torsional stiffness was also studied for the trailer portion of the existing model.

In August 2005, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed to increase the roof strength requirement under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 216 from 1.5 to 2.5 times unloaded vehicle weight (UVW). To meet the new requirement with a minimum impact on vehicle weight and cost, the automotive community is working actively to develop improved roof architectures using advanced high strength steels (AHSS) and other lightweight materials such as structural foam. The objective of this study is to develop an optimized steel-only solution with low material and part-manufacturing costs. Since the new regulation will present a particular challenge to the roof architectures of large vans, pickup trucks and SUVs due to their large mass and size, a validated roof crush model on a B-Pillar-less light truck is utilized in this study.

A truck-trailer combination is modeled using ADAMS/Car from MSC Software for handling and ride comfort performance simulations. The handling events include a double lane change and lateral roll stability. The ride comfort performance events include several sized half-rounds and various RMS courses. The variables for handling performance evaluation include lateral acceleration, roll angles and tire patch normal loads. The variables for ride performance evaluation are absorbed power and peak acceleration. This study considers the trailer spring stiffness, anti-roll bar and jounce bumper gap as the design variables. Through DOE simulations, we derived the response surface models of various performance variables so that we could consider the performance sensitivities to the design variables.

The ride performance potentials of a prototype torsio-elastic axle suspension for an off-road vehicle were investigated analytically and experimentally. A forestry vehicle was fitted with the prototype suspension at its rear axle to assess its ride performance benefits. Field measurements of ride vibration along the vertical, lateral, fore-aft, roll and pitch axes were performed for the suspended and an unsuspended vehicle, while traversing a forestry terrain. The measured vibration responses of both vehicles were evaluated in terms of unweighted and frequency-weighted rms accelerations and the acceleration spectra, and compared to assess the potential performance benefits of the proposed suspension. The results revealed that the proposed suspension could yield significant reductions in the vibration magnitudes transmitted to the operator's station.

Hard real-time systems such as automotive control systems have to guarantee that strict deadlines are met for applications. Recent automotive control systems have been network systems that have combined event-triggered with time-triggered networks, i.e., Controller Area Network (CAN) and FlexRay. A CAN-FlexRay gateway has to execute real-time message transfers from CAN to FlexRay and from FlexRay to CAN to guarantee that communication deadlines are met. Most gateways in the automotive control systems select messages according to the priority of the messages and pack them into frames. However, when many events of same kinds occur within the short period, the gateway cannot guarantee that communication deadlines for time-triggered and first event-triggered messages will be met because many event-triggered messages prevent time-triggered messages from being packed into frame.

For accurately predicting different fracture patterns of the pelvis frequently observed in pedestrian accidents with SUV/Mini-van, human finite element (FE) models have been developed. Although those models with failure representation can predict occurrence or nonoccurrence of fractures, quantitative estimation of probability of fractures is not possible. For human models without failure representation, typically stress or strain of elements is used for fracture prediction. However, numerous elements must be evaluated when fracture location is not predetermined. This study investigated methodology for accurately predicting probability of pelvic fractures using a minimal number of output parameters. The hood edge and upper and lower parts of the bumper were chosen for representing vehicle fronts. These components were modeled using rigid surfaces with the stiffness of them represented by springs, to constitute 3-component models.

This paper presents a methodology for simulating Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) for a typical vehicle bonnet (hood) under a range of onset flow conditions. The hood was chosen for this study, as it is one of the panels most prone to vibration; particularly given the trend to make vehicle panels lighter. Among the worst-case scenarios for inducing vibration is a panel being subjected to turbulent flow from vehicle wakes, and the sudden peak loads caused by emerging from a vehicle wake. This last case is typical of a passing manoeuvre, with the vehicle suddenly transitioning from being immersed in the wake of the leading vehicle, to being fully exposed to the free-stream flow. The transient flowfield was simulated for a range of onset flow conditions that could potentially be experienced on the open road, which may cause substantial vibration of susceptible vehicle panels.

The debate surrounding roof deformation and occupant injury potential has existed in the automotive community for over 30 years. In analysis of real-world rollovers, assessment of roof deformation and occupant compartment space starts with the post-accident roof position. Dynamic movement of the roof structure during a rollover sequence is generally acknowledged but quantification of the dynamic roof displacement has been limited. Previous assessment of dynamic roof deformation has been generally limited to review of the video footage from staged rollover events. Rollover testing for the evaluation of injury potential has typically been studied utilizing instrumented test dummies, on-board and off-board cameras, and measurements of residual crush. This study introduces an analysis of previously undocumented real-time data to be considered in the evaluation of the roof structure's dynamic behavior during a rollover event.

In the automotive industry, the use of beading is widely spread. Beads are primarily used to stiffen the floor and dash panels. The aim is to reduce vibration levels and hopefully at the same time reduce radiated noise. Beading has a positive effect close to the first panel mode's natural frequency however it can have a negative effect at all other frequencies. Typically, engineers assume a radiation efficiency of “1” (one) over the whole frequency range for simplicity or lack of available implemented formulation in their simulation tools. This assumption directs the investigation at reducing the vibration levels only. This approach can be misleading because even though radiation efficiency tends to “1” (one) above coincident frequency it is not the case below coincidence. While increasing stiffness reduces vibration levels, it also increases radiation efficiency. This can yield to higher levels of radiated noise.