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In the current automotive industry, it is common that the driveline subsystem and components are normally from different automotive suppliers for OEMs. In order to ensure proper system integration and successful development of driveline system NVH performances, collaboration efforts between OEMs and suppliers are very demanding and important. In this paper, a process is presented to achieve successfulness in developing and optimizing vehicle integration through effective teamwork between a driveline supplier and a major OEM. The development process includes multiple critical steps. They include target development and roll down, targets being specific and measurable, comprehension of interactions of driveline and vehicle dynamics, accurate definition of sensitivity, proper deployment of modal mapping strategy, which requires open data sharing; and system dynamics and optimization.

The American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. driveline dynamometer provides immense value for experimental validation of product NVH performances. It has been intensively used to evaluate product design robustness in terms of build variations, mileage accumulation, and temperature sensitivity. The current driveline dynamometer input motor system has multiple torsional modes which create strong coupling with test part gear mesh dynamics. Mechanical Engineering seniors at Lawrence Technological University designed, fabricated, and validated a mechanism to decouple the driveline dynamics from the driveline dynamometer dynamics. The student-designed decoupler mechanism is presented with experimental validation of effectiveness in decoupling driveline dynamometer dynamics from the driveline under test.