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Squeal from brakes is a problem in the automotive industry and large efforts are made to understand the squeal tendencies. The approach taken is mainly to change the design of the caliper, fine-tune the brake pad material and finally to trim the introducing shims on the backside of the pads. Despite these efforts still no general solutions exist. To advance the situation, a deeper understanding of the actual source of excitation of the sound in the friction interface is needed. However, in the present investigation the surfaces modifications of brake disc and pad have been tested with respect to the understanding properties. The surfaces modifications are slotted pad material and coated disc. All tests have been made in a brake test stand consisting of a complete front wheel corner of a vehicle. The changes have resulted in a significant understand of the generated noise.

Vehicle suspension along with tires and steering linkages is designed for safe vehicle control and to be free of irritating vibrations. Therefore the suspension system designs are a compromise between ride softness and handing ability. However, this work is concerned with a theoretical investigation into the ride behavior of actively suspended vehicles. It is based on using fuzzy logic control (FLC) to implement a new sort of active suspension system. Comparisons between the behavior of active suspension system with FLC with those obtained from active systems with linear control theory (LQR), ideal skyhook system and the conventional passive suspension systems. Results are introduced in such a way to predict the benefits that could be achieved from fuzzy logic system over other competing systems. Furthermore, a controller is designed and made by using results of FLC system, theoretical inputs are used to examine the validity of this controller.

Dynamic modeling of the gear vibration is a useful tool to study the vibration response of a geared system under various gear parameters and operating conditions. An improved understanding of vibration signal is required for early detection of incipient gear failure to achieve high reliability. However, the aim of this work is to make use of a 6-degree-of-freedom gear dynamic model including localized tooth defect for early detection of gear failure. The model consists of a gear pair, two shafts, two inertias representing load and prime mover and bearings. The model incorporates the effects of time-varying mesh stiffness and damping, backlash, excitation due to gear errors and modifications. The results indicate that the simulated signal shows that as the defect size increases the amplitude of the acceleration signal increases. The crest factor and kurtosis values of the simulated signal increase as the fault increases.

The early detection of incipient failure in a mechanical system is of great practical importance as it permits scheduled inspections without costly shutdowns and indicates the urgency and locations for repair before a system incurs catastrophic failure. However, in this work a new technique for processing vibration data to quantify the level of damage, cracks only, in a gear system. The technique consists of a nonlinear numerical optimization. The optimization uses a dynamic model of the gear mesh used in vehicle gearbox and forms an estimate of both time-varying and frequency-varying mesh stiffness that best corresponds to the given set of vibration data. The procedure developed in this study can be applied as a part of either an onboard machine health monitoring system or a health diagnostic system used in the regular maintenance.