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An advanced variable valve actuation (VVA) system is characterized following end-of-life testing to enable fuel economy solutions for passenger car applications. The system consists of a switching roller finger follower (SRFF) combined with a dual feed hydraulic lash adjuster and an oil control valve that are integrated into a four cylinder gasoline engine. The SRFF provides discrete valve lift capability on the intake valves. The motivation for designing this type of VVA system is targeted to improve fuel economy by reducing the air pumping losses during part load engine operation. This paper addresses the durability of a SRFF for meeting passenger car durability requirements. Extensive durability tests were conducted for high speed, low speed, switching, and cold start operation. High engine speed test results show stable valvetrain dynamics above 7000 engine rpm. System wear requirements met end-of-life criteria for the switching, sliding, rolling and torsion spring interfaces.

Automotive engines are regularly utilized in the material handling market where LPG is often the primary fuel used. When compared to gasoline, the use of gaseous fuels (LPG and CNG) as well as alcohol based fuels, often result in significant increases in valve seat insert (VSI) and valve face wear. This phenomenon is widely recognized and the engine manufacturer is tasked to identify and incorporate appropriate valvetrain material and design features that can meet the ever increasing life expectations of the end-user. Alternate materials are often developed based on laboratory testing – testing that may not represent real world usage. The ultimate goal of the product engineer is to utilize accelerated lab test procedures that can be correlated to field life and field failure mechanisms, and then select appropriate materials/design features that meet the targeted life requirements.

In racetrack conditions, brake systems are subjected to extreme energy loads and energy load distributions. This can lead to very high friction surface temperatures, especially on the brake corner that operates, for a given track, with the most available traction and the highest energy loading. Individual brake corners can be stressed to the point of extreme fade and lining wear, and the resultant degradation in brake corner performance can affect the performance of the entire brake system, causing significant changes in pedal feel, brake balance, and brake lining life. It is therefore important in high performance brake system design to ensure favorable operating conditions for the selected brake corner components under the full range of conditions that the intended vehicle application will place them under. To address this task in an early design stage, it is helpful to use brake system modeling tools to analyze system performance.

The influence of elevated temperature forming on local mechanical properties of AZ31B magnesium (Mg) sheet material was investigated. The Mg sheet was formed into a closure component with high temperature gas pressure at 485°C. Miniature tensile testing specimens were cut from selected areas of the component where different levels of thinning occurred. The specimens were strained in tension to fracture using a miniature tensile stage. The two-dimensional strain distribution in the necking region along with true stress-true strain curves were computed using a digital image correlation technique to assess the influence of the forming-induced thinning on tensile strength and percent elongation at fracture.

Under the initiative of the United States Council for Automotive Research LLC (USCAR§) Transmission Working Group, a collaborative effort was made with LuK USA LLC to study the influence of the friction interface parameters on the shudder durability of a wet launch clutch. Clutch configurations with different combinations of four friction materials (A, B, C and D), three groove patterns (waffle, radial and waffle-parallel) and two separator plate conditions (nitrided and non-nitrided) were considered. Durability testing consisted of a test profile, with 110 kJ energy per test cycle, developed earlier in this project. Materials A, B and C with nitrided separator plates reached the end of test criteria for the torque gradient and showed shudder. Materials B and C were more wear resistant as compared to materials A and D. The loss of friction coefficient (μ) was lower for materials B, C and D as compared to material A.

A compatibility study was conducted on fluorinated elastomers (FKM and FEPM) in various Automatic Transmission Fluids (ATF). Representative compounds from various FKM families were tested by three major FKM raw material producers - DuPont Performance Elastomers (DPE), Dyneon and Solvay. All involved FKM compounds were tested in a newly released fluid (ATF-A) side-by-side with conventional transmission fluids, at 150°C for various time intervals per ASTM D471. In order to evaluate the fluid compatibility limits, some FKM's were tested as long as 3024 hrs, which is beyond the normal service life of seals. Tensile strength and elongation were monitored as a function of ATF exposure time. The traditional dipolymers and terpolymers showed poor resistance to the new fluid (ATF-A). Both types demonstrated significant decreases in strength and elongation after extended fluid exposure at 150°C.

It is well known that lining reduction through wear affects contact pressure profile and noise generation. Due to high complexity in brake noise analysis, many factors were not included in previous analyses. In this paper, a new analysis process is performed by running brake “burnishing” cycles first, followed by noise analysis. In the paper, brake lining reduction due to wear is assumed to be proportional to the applied brake pressure with ABAQUS analysis. Brake pads go through four brake application-releasing cycles until the linings settle to a more stable pressure distribution. The resulting pressure profiles show lining cupping and high pressure spots shifting. The pressure distributions are compared to TekScan measurements. Brake noise analysis is then conducted with complex eigenvalue analysis steps; the resulting stability chart is better correlated to testing when the wear is comprehended.

The component being formed experiences some type of prestrain that may have an effect on its fatigue strength. This study investigated the forming effects on material fatigue strength of dual phase sheet steel (DP600) subjected to various uniaxial prestrains. In the as-received condition, DP600 specimens were tested for tensile properties to determine the prestraining level based on the uniform elongation corresponding to the maximum strength of DP600 on the stress-strain curve. Three different levels of prestrain at 90%, 70% and 50% of the uniform elongation were applied to uniaxial prestrain specimens for tensile tests and fatigue tests. Fatigue tests were conducted with strain controlled to obtain fatigue properties and compare them with the as-received DP600. The fatigue test results were presented with strain amplitude and Neuber's factor.

Tensile measurements and fracture surface analysis of low carbon heat-treated boron steel are reported. Tensile coupons were quasi-statically deformed to fracture in a miniature tensile testing stage with custom data acquisition software. Strain contours were computed via a digital image correlation method that allowed placement of a digital strain gage in the necking region. True stress-true strain data corresponding to the standard tensile testing method are presented for comparison with previous measurements. Fracture surfaces were examined using scanning electron microscopy and the deformation mechanisms were identified.

Due to competitive pressures and the need to rapidly develop new products for the automotive marketplace, the automotive industry has to rapidly develop and validate automotive subsystems and components. While many CAE tools are employed to decrease the time needed for a number of brake engineering tasks such as stress analysis, brake system sizing, thermo-fluid analysis, and structural dynamics, brake lining wear and the associated concept of “lining life” are still predominantly developed and validated through resource intensive public road vehicle testing. The goal of this paper is to introduce and detail an energy-based, lumped-parameter CAE approach to predict brake lining life in passenger cars and light trucks.

In the automotive industry, vehicle durability analysis is based on test schedule encompassing multiple road surfaces (events) including rough roads, potholes, etc. Traditionally, in the Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) world, road load data for various road surfaces are measured/predicted and fatigue life is predicted for each individual road surface. Fatigue life for the complete test schedule is then calculated with Miner’s rule by summing fatigue damage for each road surface with an appropriate number of repetitions. A major pitfall of this approach is that it does not consider the effect of the largest rainflow range across the entire test schedule. The method described in this paper was developed to perform fatigue analysis of structures subjected to diverse road surfaces and also consider the case in which the maximum overall peak and minimum overall valley do not occur over the same road surface.

Two thread forming processes, rolling and cutting, were studied for their effects on fatigue in cast aluminum 319-T7. Material was excised from cylinder blocks and tested in rotating-bending fatigue in the form of unnotched and notched specimens. The notched specimens were prepared by either rolling or cutting to replicate threads in production-intent parts. Cut threads exhibited conventional notch behavior for notch sensitive materials. In contrast, plastic deformation induced by rolling created residual compressive stresses in the notch root and significantly improved fatigue strength to the point that most of the rolled specimens broke outside the notch. Fractographic and metallographic investigation showed that cracks at the root of rolled notches were deflected upon initiation. This lengthened their incubation period, which effectively increased fatigue resistance.

The wear test introduced in this paper can be used to determine and rank PV (pressure time velocity) capability of plastic materials for applications where a plastic part is rotating or reciprocating against a metal surface. It provides an accelerated test method to evaluate the wear performance of plastic materials. A single test can provide tribological information at multiple PV conditions. The tribological information obtained from this method includes coefficient of friction, PV (pressure times velocity) limits, and interface temperature profile. This test is currently used by General Motors Corporation to develop plastic materials for transmission thrust washer and dynamic seal applications. The test is running in two sequences (A & B), capable of a PV range from 50,000 psi-ft/min 500,000 psi-ft/min, under dry conditions. The PV steps in sequence A are combinations of high pressure and low velocity - for applications where high loads are expected, such as thrust washers.

Drop tower axial crush testing was performed on hat section samples of various steel grades ranging in minimum tensile strength from 410 MPa to 1300 MPa. It was demonstrated that the energy absorption capability increases with the tensile strength of the steel. However, steels of very high strength, greater than 980 MPa tensile strength, exhibited a greater tendency for weld button pullout or material fracture, and thus limited energy the absorption capability. The effect of the closeout plate and the yield strength of the steel on energy absorption were also investigated. FEA simulations were performed and correlated to the experimental results. A flow stress based material criterion is introduced based on the analytical approach to compare the crush performance of steels.

The goal was to automate the entire analytical process of structural fatigue life variation assessment with respect to the variations associated with the geometry such as thickness, material properties and loading conditions. Consequently, the structural reliability is evaluated systematically. This process automation has been realized by using an internally developed software package called Structural Fatigue/Reliability Sensitivity II (i.e. FRS II). The package is a bundle of MSC/Nastran, nCode, iSIGHT, and internally developed program scripts.

The staircase fatigue test method is a well-established, but poorly understood probe for determining fatigue strength mean and standard deviation. The sensitivity of results to underlying distributions was studied using Monte Carlo simulation by repeatedly sampling known distributions of hypothetical fatigue strength data with the staircase test method. In this paper, the effects of the underlying distribution on staircase test results are presented with emphasis on original normal, lognormal, Weibull and bimodal data. The results indicate that the mean fatigue strength determined by the staircase testing protocol is largely unaffected by the underlying distribution, but the standard deviation is not. Suggestions for conducting staircase tests are provided.

4-Post durability test simulations using a nonlinear FEA model have been executed by engineers responsible for structural durability performance and validation. An integrated Body and Chassis, full FEA model has been used. All components of the test load input were screened and only the most damaging events were incorporated in the simulation. These events included the Potholes, Belgian Block Tracks, Chatter Bump Stops, Twist Ditches, and Driveway Ramps. The CAE technology Virtual Proving Ground (eta/VPG®*) was used to model the full system and the 4-Post test fixtures. The nonlinear dynamic FE solver LS-DYNA** was used in this analysis. The fatigue damage of each selected event was calculated separately and then added together according to the test schedule. Due to the lack of stress/strain information from hardware test, only the analyzed fatigue damage results of the baseline model were scaled to correlate with physical test data.

This paper is targeted to engineers who are involved in predicting fatigue life using either the strain-life approach or the stress-life approach. However, more emphasis is given to the strain-life approach, which is commonly used for fatigue life analysis in the ground vehicle industry. It attempts to discuss, modify and extend approaches in fatigue analysis, so they are best suited for structural durability engineers. Fatigue analysis requires the use of material fatigue properties, stress or strain results obtained from finite element analyses or measurements, and load data obtained from multi-body dynamic analysis or road load data acquisition. This paper examines the effects of these variables in predicting fatigue life. Various mean stress corrections, along with their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Different stress/strain combinations such as signed von Mises, and signed Tresca are examined. Also, advanced methods such as Fatemi-Socie and Bannantine are discussed.

The battery support in a small car is an example of a subsystem that lends itself to mounted component dynamic fatigue analysis, due to its weight and localized attachments. This paper describes a durability analysis method that was developed to define the required enforced motion, stress response, and fatigue life for such subsystems. The method combines the large mass method with the modal transient formulation to determine the dynamic stress responses. The large mass method was selected over others for its ease of use and efficiency when working with the modal formulation and known accelerations from a single driving point. In this example, these known accelerations were obtained from the drive files of a 4-DOF shake table that was used for corresponding lab tests of a rear compartment body structure. These drive files, originally displacements, were differentiated twice and filtered to produce prescribed accelerations to the finite element model.

Recently published SAE Recommended Practice J2562 - SAE Biaxial Wheel Test standardized the terminology, equipment, and test procedure for the biaxial wheel test. This test was originally presented by Fraunhofer Institut Betriebsfestigkeit - LBF (Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability) in SAE paper 830135 “Automotive Wheels, Method and Procedure for Optimal Design and Testing”. The first release of SAE J2562 included a generic, scalable load file applicable to wheels designed for five to eight passenger vehicles with capacity to carry a proportional amount of luggage or ballast. Future releases of SAE J2562 would include two additional load files; one applicable to light trucks that have substantial cargo capacity and one for sports cars typically limited to two passengers and marginal luggage. This report details the process used to develop the SAE Biaxial Wheel Test Load File for passenger vehicles.