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This SAE Aerospace Recommended Practice (ARP) identifies the best practices to reduce damage and promote safety during the storage, handling, and shipping of W/T assemblies.

Abstract The ground vibration test (GVT) is an important phase in a new aircraft development program, or the structural modification of a certified aircraft, to experimentally determine the structural vibrational modes of the aircraft and their modal parameters. These modal parameters are used to validate and correlate the dynamic finite element model of the aircraft to predict potential structural instabilities (such as flutter), assessing the significance of modifications to research vehicles by comparing the modal data before and after the modification and helping to resolve in-flight anomalies. Due to the high cost and the extensive preparations of such tests, a new method of vibration testing called the taxi vibration test (TVT) rooted in operational modal analysis (OMA) was recently proposed and investigated as an alternative method to conventional GVT.

This document focuses on the latest in-force regulations. However, in addition to latest information, the report may include historical information. As regulations are superseded, the previous entry will remain to help understand the change in requirements over time. The initial focus of the document includes light-, medium-, and heavy-duty on-road vehicles with all propulsion systems. The document will include information from the United States and Canada, with later publications expanding to other regions. Forecasts for future regulations will not be included in the spreadsheet but be kept in a separate document. The document may be expanded to other types of applications/vehicles as information becomes available.

The focus of this project is on the preliminary design of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) utilizing a coaxial rotor setup, taking into account its flight dynamics. Additionally, a comprehensive aerodynamic analysis is conducted using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The idealogy for our design came from the Rukma Vimana, a flying craft mentioned in the ancient Hindu Scriptures. The design is optimized with the coaxial copter setup, a different approach that has yet to be widely explored in the UAV aspect. Coaxial rotors are installed in pairs, with one rotor mounted above the other on concentric shafts. Both rotors have the same axis of rotation, but they rotate in opposite directions (contra-rotate). CFD simulations are conducted to see how the fluid medium flows over the unconventional design of the UAV. Three different in terms of three designs heights are considered, ie, a 30 cm height model, a 35 cm height model, and a 40 cm height model.

This specification establishes requirements for a corrosion-removing compound in the form of a liquid concentrate.

This Aerospace Standard establishes the diameter-pitch combinations of ISO metric 60° screw threads recommended for use in the aerospace industry for metric module bolts and nuts.

This document covers all metal, castellated, self-locking nuts made from alloy steel of the types identified under the Unified Numbering System as UNS G41300 and UNS G43400.

The focus on driver and occupant safety as well as comfort is increasing rapidly while designing commercial vehicles in India. Improvements in the road network have enhanced road transport for commercial vehicles. Apart from the cost of operation and fuel economy, the commercial vehicles must deliver goods within stipulated time. These factors resulted in higher speed of operation for commercial vehicles. The design should not compromise the safety of the vehicle at these higher speeds of operation. The vehicle should obey the driver’s intended direction at all speeds and the response of the vehicle to driver input must be predictable without much larger surprises which can lead to accidents. The commercial vehicles are designed with rigid axle and RCB type steering system. This suspension and steering design combination introduce steering errors when vehicle travel over bump, braked and while cornering.

Driving dynamics performance is one of the key customer attributes to be developed during product development. In the vehicle development process, freezing the hardware of the chassis aggregates is one of the major priorities to kick off the other vehicle development activities. The current work involves the development of a multilink suspension for an SUV class vehicle. Typically, each OEM performs several product development loops for maturing the vehicle design. The driving dynamics performance evaluation and tuning happens on a physical vehicle with the driver in Loop. Tuning of suspension parameter on the physical vehicle entails actual replacement of parts/components. This encompasses multiple tuning cycles in product development associated with increased cost and test time. To reduce the product development time and cost while delivering first time right chassis configuration, we took an approach of getting driver-in-loop through driving simulator in the concept phase.

In automotive world role of suspension system is to absorb vibrations from the road, and to provide stability while vehicle is going over bumps or uneven roads, cornering, acceleration and braking etc. For body on frame SUVs which are typically characterized by high center of gravity, it is quite critical to find best balance in ensuring stability of the vehicle and having comfortable ride performance. Rigid axle rear suspension is quite a typical choice in such vehicles, wherein lower and upper control links are two important components subjected to lateral, longitudinal, and vertical loads. These links allow the vehicle to move smoothly throughout the entire range of suspension travel. Kinematics and compliance optimization of these links is a major factor in definition of ride-handling performance of the vehicle.

For any two wheeler vehicle development, rider and pillion comfort while driving the vehicles over different kinds of road perturbations holds high importance. Designing a vehicle for comfort starts at the very beginning of its layout definition through vehicle geometric parameters, key hardpoints, mass-inertia distribution of subsystems and suspension characteristics. There is a need for highly reliable simulation models for comfort predictions as any change in layout during subsequent design stages is a very costly affair. Accurately predicting comfort using a full vehicle model is a challenging task though as it depends on how realistic the Simulation Model is to that of actual vehicle. While suspension stiffness and damping characteristics remain critical parameters for the comfort, selection of tyres are known to hold equal importance in vehicle comfort.

Potholes are a major cause of discomfort for riders and vehicle damage. The passive suspension systems which are used in the passenger vehicles are primarily reaction based. These can’t adapt to the changing road conditions which means the best ride quality and handling characteristics cannot be ensured for different driving situations. Passive suspension system also needs more maintenance due to its inability to reduce the impact of the road irregularities. In recent years, semi-active suspension systems have been developed to improve ride comfort and vehicle safety. This paper covers the integration of a semi-active suspension system with a road preview mechanism with a TATA car model to investigate its impact on ride comfort, handling characteristics and component loads in digital domain. A quarter car vehicle model is used to compare different active damping control strategies.

Heavy Commercial Road Vehicles (HCRVs) may be more susceptible to rollover incidents due to their higher centre of gravity position than passenger vehicles, and rollover is one of the significant causes of HCRV accidents. Therefore, variation in vehicle roll behaviour becomes crucial to the safety of an HCRV. Toe misalignment is a commonly observed phenomenon in HCRVs, and studying its impact on roll behaviour is important. In this study, the impact of the symmetric toe and thrust misalignment on the roll behaviour of an HCRV is analysed using IPG TruckMaker®, a vehicle dynamics simulation software. A ramp steer manoeuvre was used for the simulations, and the toe misalignment on a wheel was chosen from the range [-0.21°, 0.21°]. Variation in roll behaviour was quantified using the steering wheel angle at which one-wheel lift-off (OWL) occurred (SWAL).

Vehicle design necessarily involves tuning various parameters to optimize automotive performance metrics like ride and handling. The tuning process is iterative and involves a trial-and-error approach to understand the influence of the input parameters on various output metrics. We develop tuning models and run many simulations to optimize various parameters, followed by validation. This process is computationally expensive and contingent on the output metrics. Alternatively, data-driven modelling could overcome shortcomings but requires extensive data sets to train, which may not be feasible in the initial design phase. In this work, we demonstrate how we can use Dynamic Mode Decomposition, commonly used in Fluid Mechanics, to create Reduced Order Single Parameter Tuning Models, which are computationally lightweight and can provide the output metrics as a function of one tuning parameter. It reduces the tuning time and also helps to understand the system better.

Motorcycles are a preferred means of transportation in most of the countries due to its economic factor and ease in travelling. Rider comfort is an important aspect while designing a vehicle. Rider comfort is often compromised by unwanted vibrations experienced at human interface points also called as tactile points. These unwanted vibrations also affect rider’s motorcycle control and overall health. There are two major source of vibrations in a motorcycle that is engine & road inputs. In current study, a method is being explored to predict engine induced vibrations. Engine induced vibrations at various locations are simulated through multi body dynamics (MBD) and finite element (FE) simulation methods at vehicle level. Motorcycle model comprising of engine, frame and subassemblies are modeled in FE tool and then condensed to be used in MBD tool. Piston assembly, connecting rod, bearings and engine mounts are modeled in MBD tool.

The Indian automotive industry is striving towards more safe and durable vehicles. A need was felt to study the effect of changes in axle static loads on fatigue life of the axle components. Also, there was a need to develop generic test method, as there are no test standards or generic methods available in public domain for fatigue testing of commercial vehicle axles. The study was carried out to check direct effect of change in axle loads on various connections on axle, effect of suspension configuration and force distribution, Vehicle dynamics, etc. In this paper, an India specific generic load spectra was evaluated for accelerated laboratory validation. Paper discusses the methodology as; study of heavy commercial vehicle systems, road load data collection on identified test vehicles w.r.t. test matrix finalized, India specific test loads and load spectra development, normalization of axle load spectra w.r.t to static axle weights and arriving at test guidelines.

Tyre wear is of significant concern for the automotive industry due to multiple reasons including vehicle performance, safety, economy, environmental (particulate matter emission) aspects, etc. Therefore, ensuring enhanced tyre tread wear resistance is one of the most important criteria while developing a new tyre. Tyre wear phenomenon is influenced by various factors, such as road conditions, driving habits, maintenance practices and tyre design parameters (construction, geometry and material). The wear assessment through the classical field-testing approach consumes significant time and resources. Therefore, digital predictive tools are very useful in predicting wear characteristics at the early stage of the tyre development process. In this study, an attempt has been made to capture the impact of tread geometry, tread material, vehicle geometry, vehicle speed, test track geometry, etc. on tyre wear.

With the recent development in virtual modelling and vehicle simulation technology, many OEM’s worldwide are using digital road profiles in virtual environment for vehicle durability load prediction and virtual design evaluation. For precise simulation results, it is important to have the tire digital twin which is the realistic representation of tire in the virtual environment. The study comprises of discussion about different types of tire models such as empirical, solid model, rigid ring model and flexural ring models such as Pacejka, MF Swift, CD tire, F tire etc. and also the complexity involved in development of these tire models. Generation of virtual tire model requires highly sophisticated test rigs as well as vehicle level testing with Wheel Force transducers and other vehicle dynamics sensors. The large number of data points generated with testing are converted in standard TYDEX format to be further processed in various software tool for virtual model generation.