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In the engine management systems field, there is lack of sensors locally built and available for sale in Brazil. Therefore, many auto parts companies have to import them affecting directly the final products costs (technology know-how/development costs, import taxes and other material handling/custom related costs). This paper was motivated to study an alternative for a simple, cheaper and locally made throttle position sensor. The choose of this part was because the fact that it is one of the most expensive in the throttle body bill of. For developing this new alternative, it was used a tool called value analysis and value engineering. The outcome of this study was a throttle position sensor function integrated to the throttle body manufacturing line with the advantages that 100% components can be locally purchased, improved robustness against humidity and component quantity reduction by 40%. Therefore achieving more value added.

The penetration of rainwater through the heating ventilation and air conditioning system (HVAC) of a vehicle directly affects the provision of thermal comfort within the vehicle passenger compartment. Present vehicle designs restrict considerably the air-management processes due to reduced space and tighter packaging. The motivation for the study is to get an insight into factors affecting the water ingress phenomenon when a stationary vehicle is subjected to water loading such as heavy rain when parked or waiting in a traffic light or when in a car wash. The test programme made use of a compact closed circuit full-scale automotive climatic wind tunnel that is able to simulate wind, rain and road inclination. The tunnel was developed as part of the collaborative research between the Flow Diagnostics Laboratory (FDL) of the University of Nottingham and Visteon Climate Control Systems [1].

For the past decade or so, automotive entertainment subsystem architectures have consisted of a simple Human Machine Interface (HMI), AM-FM tuner, a tape deck, an amplifier and a set of speakers. Over time, as customer demand for more entertainment features increased, automotive entertainment integrators made room for new features by allowing for the vertical integration of analog audio and adding a digital control. The new digital control came to entertainment subsystems via a low-speed multiplexing scheme embedded into the entertainment subsystem components, allowing remote control of these new features. New features were typically incorporated into the entertainment subsystem by independently packaging functional modules. Examples of these modules are cellular telephone, Compact Disc Jockey (CDJ), rear-seat entertainment, Satellite Digital Audio Radio System (S-DARS) receiver, voice and navigation with its associated display and hardware.

An accelerated seat durability test was developed to identify potential problems in areas with traditionally high warranty cost and customer dissatisfaction: squeak & rattle and mechanism looseness & efforts. The test inputs include temperature, humidity, road vibration, occupant movements, and mechanism cycling. These inputs were combined into a single 14-day test profile that simulates 10 years and 250,000 km. (approximately 150,000 miles) of 95th percentile customer usage. Various components of the seat assembly are tested together as a system. The test was performed on two current production programs. The test produced issues similar to those found in warranty repair data and evaluations of used seats from high-mileage customer-owned vehicles.

Pressures to increase the recyclable and recycled content of passenger vehicles are accelerating. In Europe, there is interest in eliminating halogenated polymers. Globally, more and more concern is focused on materials and methods that are ecologically friendly. Automakers and their suppliers are being encouraged to design and assemble components in new ways to facilitate separation, identification, and resource recovery at the end of the vehicle’s useful life - something that is not only good for the environment, but also the bottom line. One area of the vehicle that has proved challenging for applying such design for disassembly and recycling (DFD/R) principles has been the interior, owing to the sheer number of materials used there, and the great number of laminate structures that make disassembly nearly impossible. A good example is a door panel inner, which typically consists of a rigid plastic substrate, a foam pad, and a vinyl, leather, or cloth covering.

Fuel Vapor Storage Systems (FVSS) on automobiles are susceptible to particle contamination. This is especially true for FVSS components mounted under the automobiles (undercarriage, chassis frame, etc.) and required to meet stringent EPA standards. Particle contamination significantly increases system restriction and reduces the effectiveness of FVSS. This paper describes a dust separator/filter developed to protect the FVSS. Accelerated field durability evaluations and measurement techniques were developed to identify clean locations, ingested contamination levels and ingested contaminant size distributions. Based on field evaluations, test methods were developed in the lab to evaluate effectiveness of several devices to control and reduce contamination. The dust separator design developed was a combination of baffle separators in series with an open cell foam filter. The dust separator was designed to meet and exceed several vehicle system design requirements.