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The Multi Material Lightweight Vehicle (MMLV) developed by Magna International and Ford Motor Company is a result of a US Department of Energy project DE-EE0005574. The project demonstrates the lightweighting potential of a five passenger sedan, while maintaining vehicle performance and occupant safety. Prototype vehicles were manufactured and limited full vehicle testing was conducted. The Mach-1 vehicle design, comprised of commercially available materials and production processes, achieved a 364 kg (23.5%) full vehicle mass reduction, enabling the application of a 1-liter 3-cylinder engine resulting in a significant environmental benefit and fuel reduction. This paper includes details associated with the noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) sound package design and testing. Lightweight design actions on radiating panels enclosing the vehicle cabin typically cause vehicle interior acoustic degradation due to the reduction of panel surface mass.

Thermal modeling of liquid-cooled vehicle traction battery assemblies using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) usually involves large models to accurately resolve small cooling channel details, and intensive computation to simulate drive-cycle transient solutions. This paper proposes a segregated method to divide the system into three parts: the cells, the cold plate and the interface between them. Each of the three parts can be separated and thermally characterized and then combined to predict the overall system thermal behavior for both steady-state and transient operating conditions. The method largely simplifies battery thermal analysis to overcome the limitations of using large 3D CFD models especially for pack level dynamic drive cycle simulations.

Low frequency brake system noise has been a systemic and ongoing issue for several automakers. The noise is a combined effect of brake and suspension systems working with each other. The noise transmission path is also important. The latest warranty and quality indicators on this has resulted in high degree of dissatisfaction for several vehicles. The customer complaints have been for grind noise, grunt and groan. The team focused on a multi-level integrated approach for this problem. The first step was deep diving and dissecting the customer complaint data. The low frequency noise for grind and groan can be reduced to several contributors. One of the main issues was the movement of pads over the rotor fins resulting in dynamic groan type of noise. It was important to relate this to the customer complaint for grind. In association with that, the grind noise was also caused by in-stop grunt type of noise.

Valvetrain ticking noise is one of the key failure modes in noise vibration harshness (NVH) evaluation at idle. It affects customer satisfaction inversely. In this paper, the root cause of the valvetrain ticking noise and key parameters that impact ticking noise will be presented. A physics based math model has been developed and integrated into a parameterized multi-body dynamic model. The analytical prediction has been correlated with testing data. Valvetrain ticking noise control is discussed.

Automobile customers are looking for higher performance and quieter comfortable rides. The driveline of a vehicle can be a substantial source of NVH issues. This paper provides an understanding of a driveline noise issue which can affect any variant of driveline architecture (FWD, AWD, RWD and 4X4). This metallic noise is mostly present during the take-off and appropriately termed as ting noise. This noise was not prevalent in the past. For higher fuel economy, OEMs started integrating several components for lighter subsystems. This in effect made the system more sensitive to the excitation. At present the issue is addressed by adding a ting washer in the interface of the wheel hub bearings and the halfshafts. This paper explains the physics behind the excitation and defines the parameters that influence the excitation. The halfshaft and the wheel hub are assembled with a specified hub nut torque.

This paper proposes an approach that uses the road preview data to optimize a shift schedule for a vehicle equipped with an automatic transmission. The road preview is inferred here from the so-called electronic horizon of a digital map that includes road attributes such as road grade, curvature, segment speed limit, functional class, etc. The optimized shift schedule selects the gear ratio whose optimization is conducted through applying a hybrid model predictive control method to the powertrain system, which is modelled as the multiple plants associated with multiple gears together with engine models. The goal of this optimization of shift schedule includes improving real world fuel economy and drivability. The real-world fuel economy gains using the proposed approach are achieved through optimizing gear ratio w.r.t. the road grade variations of the road ahead.

Rivets, especially self-piercing rivets (SPR), are a primary joining technology used in aluminum bodied vehicles. SPR are mechanical joining elements used to connect sheets to create a body in white (BiW) structure. To ensure the structural performance of a vehicle in crash load cases it is necessary to describe physical occurring failure modes under overloading conditions in simulations. One failure mode which needs to be predicted precisely by a crash simulation is joint separation. Within crash simulations a detailed analysis of a SPR joint would require a very high computational effort. The conflict between a detailed SPR joint and a macroscopic vehicle model needs to be solved by developing an approach that can handle an accurate macroscopic prediction of SPR behavior with a defined strength level with less computational effort. One approach is using a cohesive material model for a SPR connection. The paper describes cohesive element characteristics and calibration effort.

An intervention of vehicle stability control systems is more likely on slippery surfaces, e.g. when the road is covered with snow or ice. Contrary to testing on dry asphalt, testing on such surfaces is restricted by weather and proving grounds. Another drawback in testing is the reproducibility of measurements, since the surface condition changes during the tests, and the vehicle reaction is more sensitive on slippery surface. For that, simulation enables a good pre-assessment of the control systems independent from testing conditions. Essential for this is a good knowledge about the contact between vehicle and road, meaning a good tyre model and a reasonable set of tyre model parameters. However, the low friction surface has a high variation in the friction coefficient. For instance, the available lateral acceleration on scraped ice could vary between 0.2 and 0.4 g within a day. These facts lead to the idea of using generic tyre parameters that vary in a certain range.

Subjective steering feel tuning and objective verification tests are conducted on vehicle prototypes that are a subset of the total number of buildable combinations of body style, drivetrain and tires. Limited development time, high prototype vehicle cost, and hence limited number of available prototypes are factors that affect the ability to tune and verify all the possible configurations. A new model-based process and a toolset have been developed to enhance the existing steering development process such that steering tuning efficiency and performance robustness can be improved. The innovative method utilizes the existing vehicle dynamics simulation and/or physical test data in conjunction with steering system control models, and provides users with simple interfaces which can be used by either CAE or development engineers to perform virtual tuning of the vehicle steering feel to meet performance targets.

Owing to decreased development cycle timing, designing components for manufacturability has never been as important. Assessing manufacturing feasibility has therefore become an increasingly important part of new product engineering. This manufacturing feasibility is conventionally assessed based on static stiffness of components and fixture assemblies. However, in many operations, excess vibration represents the actual limitation on processing a workpiece. Limits on how far into components a tool can reach or the amount of processing time required to machine a feature is commonly decreased significantly due to vibration. Critical time is spent resolving these vibration problems during product launches. Depending on the machining configurations these vibrations can be due to the part & work support structure or due to the tooling & spindle assembly. This paper presents approaches for predicting the dynamic flexibility for either of these assemblies using purely analytical approaches.

This vehicle simulation study estimates the fuel economy benefits of an HCCI engine system and assesses the NOx, HC and CO aftertreatment performance required for compliance with emissions regulations on U.S. and European regulatory driving cycles. The four driving cycles considered are the New European Driving Cycle, EPA City Driving Cycle, EPA Highway Driving Cycle, and US06 Driving Cycle. For each driving cycle, the following influences on vehicle fuel economy were examined: power-to-weight ratio, HCCI combustion mode operating range, driving cycle characteristics, requirements for transitions out of HCCI mode when engine speeds and loads are within the HCCI operating range, fuel consumption and emissions penalties for transitions into and out of HCCI mode, aftertreatment system performance and tailpipe emissions regulations.

Tire cavity noise refers to the excitation of the acoustic mode of a tire cavity. The noise exhibits itself as sharp resonance-like peaks with frequencies typically in the range of 190-250Hz. For a rolling tire, the tire contact with the road moves relative to the tire. Furthermore, the load on the tire breaks the circular symmetry of the tire. Consequently, the peak frequency of the cavity noise shows dependence on the tire load and the vehicle speed. There are no models that simultaneously take these two factors into consideration. In this paper, we propose an analytical model and present experimental verifications of predictions on the noise peak frequency and its dependence on the tire load and vehicle speed. A wireless experimental measurement system is also presented which enables the measurement of tire cavity frequency for both non-rolling and rolling conditions.

With swelling gasoline prices, automotive OEMs have taken different approaches to improve vehicle fuel economy. One trend is to down-size the engine and to add turbo charging. One of the challenges in utilizing the turbocharger in passenger cars is to control the added NVH issues associated with this hardware, especially for the North American market where turbocharger use is scarce in gasoline engines. In this paper, the authors review an investigation on turbocharger related “whoosh” noise on a V6 engine. The whoosh noise, also called surge noise, is caused by the compressor working at or near surge conditions. Whoosh noise is a broad frequency band flow noise typically found during throttle tip-in conditions, but sometimes found even at steady state driving conditions. The root cause of whoosh noise and the detection methods are discussed in this paper. The countermeasures to reduce whoosh noises are also discussed.

Brake squeal has been a chronic customer complaint, often appearing high on the list of items that reduce customers' satisfaction with their vehicles. Brake squeal can emanate from either a drum brake or a disc brake even though the geometry of the two systems is significantly different. A drum brake generates friction within a cylindrical drum interacting with two semi-circular linings. A disc brake consists of a flat disc and two flat pads. The observed squeal behavior in a vehicle differs somewhat between drum and disc brakes. A drum brake may have a loud noise coming from three or more squeal frequencies, whereas a disc brake typically has one or two major squeal frequencies making up the noise. A good understanding of the operational deflection shapes of the brake components during noise events will definitely aid in design to reduce squeal occurrences and improve product quality.

With the continuing challenges of future fuel economy targets carbon fiber composite materials are one facet of a lightweighting strategy to enable reduced fuel consumption. In general, use of lightweight materials such as carbon fiber composites in vehicle design generates vehicle NVH performance degradation. To address this potential issue at the design phase, there is a need to develop correlated CAE models for carbon fiber vehicle parts to evaluate the NVH impact of carbon fiber composite material use in vehicle design. To develop correlated CAE models for lightweight vehicle design with the use of carbon fiber composite vehicle body parts, an experimental study was conducted to determine the material and NVH characteristics of the carbon fiber composite materials. In this paper, the damping properties and NVH modal analysis results for structural carbon fiber thermoset composite panels and body parts (B-pillar upper insert and B-pillar lower insert) is presented.

Ride comfort has been always a critical point in the development of a vehicle. In the recent years, has become an increasingly important factor in the vehicle design. Only subjective evaluation of ride comfort is no longer an acceptable or competitive way to assess the driver and passenger experience. And sometimes metrics extracted from measurements are often not correlated with subjective evaluation and with customers feed-back due to difficulties on the process of ride evaluation. Those difficulties are largely due to variations on the tracks where the vehicle is evaluated, on the speed of the vehicle passing through the tracks, etc. In other words, sometimes it is hard to have a process with a good repeatability. This work suggests a method of ride measurement which improves the repeatability and also creates a possibility to generate tracks for evaluation of specific ride problems.

Real-world second-by-second vehicle driving cycle data is very important for vehicle research and development. A project solely dedicated to generating such information would be tremendously costly and time consuming. Alternatively, we developed such a database by utilizing two publicly available passenger vehicle travel surveys: 2004-2006 Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) Travel Survey and 2011 Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) Travel Survey. The surveys complement each other - the former is in low time resolution but covers driver operation for over one year whereas the latter is in high time resolution but represents only one-week-long driving operation. After analyzing the PSRC survey, we chose 382 vehicles, each of which continuously operated for one year, and matched their trips to all the ARC trips. The matching is carried out based on trip distance first, then on average speed, and finally on duration.

Vehicle Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) performance has become an important indicator used in the “Customer Satisfaction” category in the automotive industry. Particularly, refinement of powertrain NVH performance in different vehicle operating conditions has had a major contribution to the perception of overall vehicle NVH performance. The powertrain system typically includes the engine and transmission (powerplant), driveline, axle, and induction/exhaust subsystems. This paper presents three areas of successful development work in resolving vehicle NVH issues using analytical and experimental tools: (1) powertrain bending induced vehicle NVH concerns at high speeds [1]; (2) exhaust modes induced - idle boom, vibrations, and normal vehicle speed moaning noise [2-3]; and (3) driveshaft modes and axle gear mesh force induced axle whine noise [4]. Each development work has resulted in design changes and improved NVH performance in production vehicles.

The AutoDrive Challenge competition sponsored by General Motors and SAE gives undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to get hands-on experience with autonomous vehicle technology and development as they work towards their degree. Michigan Technological University has participated in the AutoDrive Challenge since its inception in 2017 with students participating through MTU’s Robotic System Enterprise. The MathWorks Simulation Challenge has been a component of the competition since its second year, tasking students with the development of perception, control and testing algorithms using MathWorks software products. This paper presents the pedagogical approach graduate student mentors used to enable students to build their understanding of autonomous vehicle concepts using familiar tools. This approach gives undergraduate students a productive experience with these systems that they may not have encountered in coursework within their academic program.

This paper compares the results from three human factors studies conducted in a motion-based simulator in 2008, 2014 and 2023, to highlight the trends in driver's response to Forward Collision Warning (FCW). The studies were motivated by the goal to develop an effective HMI (Human-Machine Interface) strategy that enables the required driver's response to FCW while minimizing the level of annoyance of the feature. All three studies evaluated driver response to a baseline-FCW and no-FCW conditions. Additionally, the 2023 study included two modified FCW chime variants: a softer FCW chime and a fading FCW chime. Sixteen (16) participants, balanced for gender and age, were tested for each group in all iterations of the studies. The participants drove in a high-fidelity simulator with a visual distraction task (number reading). After driving 15 minutes in a nighttime rural highway environment, a surprise forward collision threat arose during the distraction task.