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To provide a greater weight capacity, the tandem axle which is a group of two or more axles situated close together has been used on most heavy truck. In general, the reaction moments during braking cause a change in load distribution among both axles of the tandem suspension. Since load transfer among axles of a tandem suspension can lead to premature wheel lockup, tandem-axle geometry and the brake force distribution among individual axles of a tandem suspension have a pronounced effect on braking efficiency. The braking efficiency has directly influence on the vehicle brake distance and vehicle travelling direction stability in any road condition, so how to improve the braking efficiency is researched in this paper. The load transfer among individual axles is not only determined by vehicle deceleration but also by the actual brake force of each axle for tandem axle suspension, which increases the difficulty of braking efficiency improving.

This paper deals with the robust design of the Load Sensing Proportional Valve (LSPV). To find out the parameters which have main effect on the performance of the LSPV, the DOE based on orthogonal experiment is carried out utilizing the LSPV model built in AMESim environment. In order to save computation expense, the RSM technique is used to approximate the optimal objectives and constraints. Then a robust design methodology using multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) is performed and a set of non-dominated solutions are therefore obtained. With specified assessments, feasible solutions can therefore be selected from the entire field of the Pareto optimal solutions. The validation is made by Monte Carlo Simulation Technique in terms of the robustness of the feasible solutions.

As is known to all, there are some contradictions between the handling and ride performance during the design process of vehicles. Sometimes owing to serious collisions of each criterion in the high-dimensional solution space, the common method to deal with the contradiction is to transform into a single target according to weights of each objective, which may not obtain a desired result. A multi-criteria approach is therefore adopted to optimize both properties and the result of a multi-criteria design is not a unique one but a series of balanced solutions. This paper is focused on the robust design of a simplified vehicle model in terms of not only ride comfort but also handling and stability using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) method. Using the proposed method, the conflicting performance requirements can be better traded off. One of the most important indexes to characterize the vertical ride comfort is the acceleration of the sprung mass.

This paper presents an optimization-based algorithm for simulating the dynamic motion of a digital human. We also formulate the metabolic energy expenditure during the motion, which is calculated within our algorithm. This algorithm is implemented and applied to Santos™, an avatar developed at The University of Iowa. Santos™ is a part of a virtual environment for conducting digital human analysis consisting of posture prediction, motion prediction, and physiology studies. This paper demonstrates our dynamic motion algorithm within the Santos™ virtual environment. Mathematical evaluations of human performance are essential to any effort to compare various ergonomic designs. In fact, the human factors design process can be formulated as an optimization problem that maximizes human performance. In particular, an optimal design must be found while taking into consideration the effects of different motions and hand loads corresponding to a number of tasks.

Workspace is an important function for human factors analysis and is widely applied in product design, manufacturing, and ergonomics evaluations. This paper presents the workspace analysis and visualization for Santos™ upper extremity, a new virtual human with over 100 DOFs that is highly realistic in terms of appearance, behavior, and movement. Jacobian Rank deficiency method is implemented to determine the singular surfaces. The joint limits are considered in this formulation; three types of singularities are analyzed. This closed-form formulation can be extended to numerous different scenarios such as different percentiles, age groups, or segments of body. A realtime scheme is used to build the workspace library for Santos™ that will study the boundary surfaces off-line and apply them to Santos™ in the virtual environment (Virtools®). To visualize the workspace, we develop a user interface to generate the cross section of the reach envelope with a plane.

A combustion products analyzer (CPA) was built for use on the Shuttle in response to several thermodegradation incidents during early flights. When the Toxicology Laboratory at Johnson Space Center (JSC) began to assess the air quality monitoring needs for the International Space Station (ISS), the CPA was the starting point for the design of a thermodegradation event monitor. The final product was significantly different from the CPA and was named the “compound specific analyzer-combustion products” (CSA-CP). One major change from the CPA was the replacement of the hydrogen fluoride sensor with an oxygen sensor. The focus of this paper will be the CSA-CP oxygen sensor’s ground testing, performance on ISS, and reduced pressure testing in response to a need on ISS.

Human performance measures such as discomfort and joint displacement play an important role in product design. The virtual human Santos™, a new generation of virtual humans developed at the University of Iowa, goes directly to the CAD model to evaluate a design, saving time and money. This paper presents an optimization-based workspace zone differentiation and visualization. Around the workspace of virtual humans, a volume is discretized to small zones and the posture prediction on each central point of the zone will determine whether the points are outside the workspace as well as the values of different objective functions. Visualization of zone differentiation is accomplished by showing different colors based on values of human performance measures on points that are located inside the workspace. The proposed method can subsequently help ergonomic design.

Presented in this paper is an on-going project to develop a new generation of virtual human models that are highly realistic in terms of appearance, movement, and feedback (evaluation of the human body during task execution). Santos™ is an avatar that exhibits extensive modeling and simulation capabilities. It is an anatomically correct human model with more than 100 degrees of freedom. Santos™ resides in a virtual environment and can conduct human-factors analysis. This analysis entails, among other things, posture prediction, motion prediction, gait analysis, reach envelope analysis, and ergonomics studies. There are essentially three stages to developing virtual humans: (1) basic human modeling (representing how a human functions independently), (2) input functionality (awareness and analysis of the human’s environment), and (3) intelligent reaction to input (memory, reasoning, etc.). This paper addresses the first stage.

Santos™, a digital human avatar developed at The University of Iowa, exhibits extensive modeling and simulation capabilities. Santos™ is a part of a virtual environment for conducting human factors analysis consisting of posture prediction, motion prediction, and ergonomics studies. This paper presents part of the functionality in the Santos™ virtual environment, which is an optimization-based algorithm for simulating dynamic motion of Santos™. The joint torque and muscle power during the motion are also calculated within the algorithm. Mathematical cost functions that evaluate human performance are essential to any effort that would evaluate and compare various ergonomic designs. It is widely accepted that the ergonomic design process is actually an optimization problem with many design variables. This effort is basically a task-based approach that believes humans assume different postures and exert different forces to accomplish different tasks.

For automated driving vehicles, path planning and trajectory tracking are the core of achieving obstacle avoidance. Real-time external environment perception and vehicle state monitoring play the important role in the decision-making of vehicle operation. Sensor measuring is an important way to obtain vehicle state parameters, but some parameters cannot be measured due to sensor cost or technical reasons, such as vehicle lateral velocity and side-slip angle. This disadvantage will adversely affect the monitoring of vehicle self-condition and the control of vehicle running, even it will lead to erroneous decision-making of vehicles. Therefore, this paper proposes an automated driving path planning and trajectory tracking control method based on Kalman filter vehicle state observer. Some of vehicle state data can be measured accurately by sensors.

In autonomous driving, variations in tire vertical load, tire slip angle, road conditions, tire pressure and tire friction all contribute to uncertainty in tire cornering stiffness. Even the same tire may vary slightly during the manufacturing process. Therefore, the uncertainty of tire cornering stiffness has an important influence for autonomous driving path planning and control strategies. In this paper, the Chebyshev interval method is used to represent the uncertainty of tire cornering stiffness and is combined with a model predictive control algorithm to obtain the trajectory interval bands under local path planning and tracking control. The accuracy of the tire cornering stiffness model and the path tracking efficiency are verified by comparing with the path planning and control results without considering the corner stiffness uncertainties.

The air brake system has been widely used since its great superiority over many other kinds of brake systems, but the capacity and the stability of air brake system are determined by many factors which are always uncertain and difficult to be evaluated accurately. So it is necessary to improve the robustness of this kind of brake system. In this paper, a physical model of air brake control system is made by a multi-domain physical modeling software-AMESim and the robust design for air brake system is carried out. Firstly, the key design parameters that will greatly affect on the delay time and pressure that leads to the shaking problem are obtained by using the method of design of experiment (DOE). Then, the regress of the response surface based on results of DOE and the robust design using the tolerance design are carried out. The value for those key parameters that can lead to the best performance and robustness of the air brake system are finally determined.

The vehicle ride comfort behavior is closely associated with the vibration isolation system such as the primary suspension system, the engine mounting system, the cab suspension system and the seat suspension system. Air spring is widely used in the cab suspension system for its low vibration transmissibility, variable spring rate and inexpensive automatic leveling. The mathematical model of the air spring is presented. The amplitude and frequency dependency of the air spring's stiffness characteristic is highlighted. The air spring dynamic model is validated by comparing the results of the experiment and the simulation. The co-simulation method of ADAMS and AMESim is applied to integrate the air spring mathematical model into the cab multi-body dynamic model. The simulation and ride comfort test results under random excitation are compared.

Suspension kinematics and compliance strongly influence the handling performance of the vehicle. The kinematics and compliance characteristics are determined by the suspension geometry and stiffness of suspension bodies and elastic components. However, it is usually inefficient to model all the joints, bushings, and linkage deformation in a full vehicle model. By transforming the complex modeling problem into a data-driven problem tends to be a good solution. In this research, the neural-network-based suspension kinematics and compliance model is built and implemented into a 17 DOF full vehicle model, which is a hybrid model with state variables expressed in the global coordinate system and vehicle coordinate system. The original kinematics and compliance characteristics are derived from multibody dynamics simulation of the suspension system level.

Electric vehicles driven by in-wheel-motor have the advantages of compact structure and high transmission efficiency, which is one of the most ideal energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and safe driving forms in the future. However, the addition of the in-wheel-motor significantly increases the unsprung mass of the vehicle, resulting in a decrease in the mass ratio of the vehicle body to the wheel, which will deteriorate the ride comfort and safety of the vehicle. To improve the vibration performance of in-wheel-motor driven vehicles, a semi-active inerter-spring-damper (ISD) suspension with in-wheel-motor (IWM) dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) of the electric wheel is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a structure of in-wheel-motor DVA is proposed, which converts the motor into a dynamic vibration absorber of the wheel to suppress the vibration of the unsprung mass.

For vehicles equipped with dry dual clutch transmission, due to the diversity of starting conditions, it is a nontrivial task for control strategy to meet the requirements of all kinds of complex starting conditions, which is easy to cause large starting shock and serious clutch wear. Therefore, it is proposed in this paper an adaptive control strategy for complex starting conditions by adjusting two clutches to participate in the starting process at the same time. On the basis of establishing the transmission system model and clutch model, the starting conditions are identified in terms of starting speed, road adhesion and driver's intention, in which the driver's intention is identified by fuzzy reasoning model. Based on the identification of starting conditions and considering the safety principle, it is selected the appropriate starting gear and clutch combination mode, and adjusted the combination speed of the two clutches to carry out an adaptive control strategy.

Increased focus on vehicle comfort and ride has led the automotive industry to look into low vibration, noise and hardness alternative designs for powertrain system components. In this paper, the vibration theory and dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) theory is presented. The modal analysis of propeller shaft assembly has been accomplished. Based on dynamic vibration absorber principle, performance parameters of dynamic vibration absorber are matched and structure is also designed. LMS equipment is applied to verify the natural frequency of absorber samples. The matching of stiffness and damping of DVA is presented. The dynamic response of drive shaft system based on the mass ratio of DVA is researched in this paper. Results from simulations and tests indicates that the amplitude of propeller shaft resonance can be effectively reduced by attaching a DVA to the long propeller shaft.

Vehicle Thermal Management System (VTMS) is a crosscutting technology affecting the fuel consumption, engine performance and emissions. With the new approved fuel economy targets and the enhanced vehicle performance requirements, the ability to predict the impact on the fuel consumption of different VTMS modifications is becoming an important issue in the pre-prototype phase of vehicle development. This paper presents a methodology using different simulation tools to model the entire VTMS in order to understand and quantify its behavior. The detailed model contains: engine cooling system, lubrication system, powertrain system, HVAC system and intake and exhaust system. A detail model of the power absorbed by the accessory components operating in VTMS such as pumps and condenser is presented. The power of the accessory components is not constant but changing with respect to engine operation. This absorbed power is taken into account within the power produced by the engine shaft.

The rubber bushing is the key component to suppress vibration in the suspension system, an accurate constitutive model of rubber bushing should capture the amplitude and frequency dependency. Based on the lumped parameter model, three types of rubber bushing models are applied and compared, including the common Kelvin-Voigt model. To evaluate the model parameter and suitable frequency range, the quasi-static and dynamic tests have been performed. Comparing with the testing result, the fractional Kelvin-Voigt model combined with Berg’s friction has the minimum relative error of dynamic stiffness on the whole. Finally, two examples of chassis bushing under different loading conditions are presented. The rubber force and deflection are analyzed in both the time domain and the frequency domain, and the results show the difference of stiffness and hysteresis loop relative to frequency.

In the petroleum and gas industry, cargo truck is one of the most important ways to transfer the skid-mounting from the manufacturer to the job location. Under the condition of bumpy road surface, the random vibration from the ground can easily cause the resonance of the internal equipment components of the skid-mounting, produce large deformation in the pipeline and equipment connection, and even the equipment will be damaged. In this paper, the finite element analysis model and dynamic rigid flexible coupling model of a TEG (Triethyleneglycol) dehydration unit regeneration skid-mounting are established by using the finite element analysis and multi-body dynamics software. The modal analysis of the skid and the vibration of the whole vehicle under different road excitation and driving conditions are carried out. Two solutions are proposed to improve the anti-vibration ability of the skid, and comparative analysis is made.