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The development of fuel systems components are becoming challenging with the increasing use of Biofuels like Biodiesels and Ethanol around the world. Biodiesels are one of the most challenging fuels, once they can have multiple sources, which influences its characteristics, mainly the oxidization stability and peroxide levels. As the fuel characteristics changes along the time, the correct materials selection during the development phase is very important for the fuel system performance during the vehicle lifetime. One of the components most affected by the Biodiesel is the in tank fuel pump system. During the vehicle lifetime, it is exposed to all sorts of fuel and its contaminants and exposed to system stress factors like temperature and voltage variation. The wires insulation in the fuel pump systems are one of the most affected components.

The application of press hardening steels (PHS) Al-Si coating has been increasing in body in white vehicles as an approach to meet the demands of safety and CO2 reduction regulations. The vehicle structures with PHS largely depend on the integrity and the mechanical performance of the spots weld. During the spot welding process, intermetallic phase may appear in function of the chemical composition of the steel and coating. One of these intermetallics is the Fe-Al phase which brittleness decreases the strength of the weld joint. In this study, resistance spot welding (RSW) experiments were performed in order to evaluate the influence of the welding parameters of single-lap joints PHS - 22MnB5 steel grade.

Vehicle ergonomics, more specifically driver ergonomics, has been the subject of interest in the automotive industry as a way to provide customers vehicles that have more than modern project, efficiency and competitive price. The driver ergonomics is related to the way the driver interacts with the vehicle interior, particularly, with the seat, hand and foot controls, considering aspects such as ease of access, space, proper upper and lower limb motion and drivers comfort and fatigue. Regarding the lower limbs, the driver’s comfort can be evaluated in terms of joint moments and muscle forces, which are influenced by the hip, knee and ankle joint angles, which in turn depend on the distances between the seat and pedal. Variations in seat to pedal horizontal or vertical distances will result in different angular positions and, consequently, different joint moments and muscle forces, which are associated to greater or lower muscular activations and greater or lower driver’s fatigue.

Vehicular manual transmissions systems often use a vent or breather to allow pressure control inside the main structure. This pressure variation comes along with differences caused by working temperature range. However along with air flow these vents may occasionally allow oil passage noticed by vehicle owner as a transmission leakage event. The more sophisticated the more expensive is the venting device which may contain membranes, labyrinths, baffles and other solutions to avoid leakage. The purpose of this paper is to present a simplified solution to avoid transmission fluid leakage by combining a regular sealing device (fiber concept gasket) and a baffle to avoid oil splash to reach the venting device. The proposed concept took into consideration a quick implementation aspect, low financial impact and less complexity to the overall current system modifying an existing component by adding secondary function instead of creating additional components.

Over recent years, demands for fuel-efficient vehicles have increased with the rise of the fuel price and public concerns on environment. Recently, application of lightweight materials is increasing in the automobile industry in order to improve mass reduction and consequently fuel efficiency. On this particular study, with a goal of developing a Lightweight Fixed Steering Column, it was identified an opportunity to replace fixed steering column metallic upper and lower brackets by polymeric material. In order to fulfill NVH, Crash, Durability and Performance requirements, a DFSS methodology has been applied. As a result, It was achieved ∼51% of mass reduction, ∼10% of performance improvement with ∼14% of cost increase.

Product Design is a process of creating new product by an organization or business entity for its customer. Being part of a stage in a product life cycle, it is very important that the highest level of effort is being put in the stage. The Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology consists of a collection of tools, needs-gathering, engineering, statistical methods, and best practices that find use in product development. DFSS has the objective of determining the needs of customers and the business, and driving those needs into the product solution so created. In this paper the DFSS methodology is employed to develop the optimal solution to enhance sound transmission loss in a vehicle front of dash pass-through. An integrated approach using acoustic holography and beamforming Noise Source Identification (NSI) techniques is presented as a manner to improve sound insulation during vehicle development.

This work conducted an optimization in sheet metal blank's sizes for cold pressing automotive parts, comparing dimensional characteristics of automotive hood outer panels deep drawn with commonly used blank sizes for this process. As a result, it was possible to suggest modifications to smaller blank sizes, accordingly to the improvement accomplished in this work. The experimental study was conducted from observations in part's superficial aspects after its deep drawing process, which was realized in a commonly used tooling for automotive industry, with a blank's width reduction for the suggested case. The results showed a cost reduction opportunity based in this optimization.

The control of noise and vibrations using conventional damping materials is typically associated to mass penalties in a vehicle. A lightweight alternative employs piezoceramic materials connected in series to a resistor and an inductor (R-L circuit) to perform as mechanical vibration absorber, called piezoelectric resonator. In this paper, piezoelectric resonators are designed to attenuate vibration in a vehicle panel. The choice of design parameters, such as correct placement for the piezoelectric patches and the optimal electrical circuit values, is assisted by Finite Element simulation (FE) and theoretical analysis. Measurements of Sound Transmission Loss (STL) and modal analyses are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed technique when compared to a conventional damping material.

The growing need to avoid failures in vehicle components have become the methods of quality control of manufacturing processes more efficient and accurate, especially in safety components like automotive wheels. The aim of this work is examines the efficiency of aluminum-silicon specifications related to wheel quality for avoiding the poor results obtained in impact and fatigue tests as result of improper settings in the chemical composition and manufacture process. It is evaluated mainly the content of magnesium in aluminum alloys and certified the correct degree of silicon modification in the microstructure on the performance of these wheels. The test results indicate that even with the chemical composition parameters specified by the standard, the technical validation of the product may not be adequate.

The automotive industry is spending a huge amount of money searching for new technologies, focused on cost reduction of product and/or process, quality improvements and nowadays aiming for environmental improvements. This paper shows a new technology applied to the automotive industry and a new development of production process of painting with chromed plate appearance. Chromed plate is a traditional electrolytically deposited chromium coating on the first surface of plastic components used in several automotive parts to improve the vehicle jewel effect, more often to differentiate luxury levels into a vehicle platform (in this case for top level vehicles), but with some dramatically important issues, such as: process scraps, part costs and heavy metals in their composition. This new technology is environmentally friendly chrome appearance (water-based without heavy metals), and has reduced costs, compared with the traditional process of chroming.

Few products or services exist that do not require some supply chain management. The more suppliers that are involved the more complex the supply chain management becomes. Even if the entire supply chain from basic raw materials that come from the earth or out of the minds and actions of people, is not considered there is still a supply chain that must be attended and in today's global economy competition is growing every day, and automotive products (vehicles and components) are often developed in one country though it's made based on global architectures, used and applied in other markets, and to find success in this competitive reality, automakers and/or global business migrated from local suppliers to global sourcing and in today's world of global outsourcing, supply chain management plays an ever important, strategic and expanding role in delivering results once automakers are aiming to launch low cost vehicles and recognized as world best-in-class products.

In the last decades, there has been an increasing demand for vehicle noise control and, at the same time, fuel economy has become critical for the automotive industry. Therefore, a precise balance between performance and mass of sound package components is essential. In this work the original dash insulation system of an automotive vehicle was replaced by a lightweight alternative. The methodology of Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) was employed to design multilayered fibrous constructions for engine noise control. The results were verified through experimental testing and supported the achievement of vehicle requirements regarding comfort, weight and environment.

The current study shows important results obtained by a new technique of residual stress virtual evaluation in automotive components for improving the development and quality of new products, aiming the structural performance, mass and cost reductions. The approaching those virtual results were adjusted by metallurgic data obtained in metallography, mechanical and chemical analysis. As part of this proposal, an automotive aluminum wheel belong to current production was evaluated in accordance with data acquired in the wheel manufacturing process. It was taking in account the real information of casting process parameters and the metallurgic information obtained in laboratorial tests. In this work, the results show that product residual stresses shall be considerate and evaluated during design phases as improving proposal, new technical concerns and quality improving.

Reliability, maintainability/serviceability and security are three qualities of product excellence desired by customers and users of products, however customer expectation for product reliability are continually increasing for almost all product and despite of most of the companies has worked on the philosophy of continuous improvement to meet or exceed the customer's expectations, its difficult to avoid failures or its difficult to ensure zero defect. Once it happens, it generate a customer complaint which is registered by companies. The way that companies used to register the complaints is through their warranty system and also a special database. Most of the companies maintain warranty databases for purposes of financial reporting and warranty expense forecasting. In some cases, there are attempts to extract engineering information from such databases. Another application is to use warranty data to detect potentially serious field reliability problems as early as possible.

In the automotive industries, time and parts production costs are fundamental, mainly in prototyping production. The RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanized) process is an important alternative production to flexible silicone molds when you need to inject polyurethane parts. The objective is time reduction in tooling production and parts. RTV requires notable initial investments in equipments. Many times, this cost does not fit in the automotive third part company's budget. This work shows how is possible to obtain parts by RTV process with excellent quality, without high investments in equipments and without quality loss in produced parts. Lead times and tooling and parts costs are analyzed. Due to equipments low costs, this alternative is accessible not only to automotive industries but also to small and medium suppliers.

The current study proposes to approach the fatigue behavior of stabilizer bars and specimens manufactured in quenched / tempered and as-received SAE5160 steels with and without a surface micro-notch. Some S-N specimens and stabilizer bars were shot-peened to improve the fatigue strength due to creation of compressive surface residue stresses and by surface plastic strain and others samples received a surface micro-notch of 0.3 mm depth introduced by EDM process. The crack growth evaluation at micro-notch was made comparatively with da/dN-ΔK curves in CT specimens. The proposed experimental study consists of comparative analysis of da/dN-ΔK and S-N curves, fractographic and, metallographic analysis, stabilizer bar bench tests, and after that, it is intended to show the relevant aspects of two microstructural classes currently specified for stabilizer bars, the beneficial effects obtained by shot peening and the bad influences of surface micro-notches.

The current study has the proposal to approach the differences in dynamic behavior between camshaft manufactured in the traditional gray cast iron and an alloyed gray cast iron with the improvement on mechanical properties in order to stresses found on roller finger follower applied systems. The main objective of this paper is to show that camshaft made of modified gray cast iron and heat treated through the remelting process is still a good solution for application with roller finger followers systems which requires higher wear resistance standards. The proposed experimental study consists of comparative analysis of microstructure and hardness, dynamometers tests, dimensional measurements of camshafts, and after that, intends to show the higher performance of this manufacturing process in more severe applications of internal combustion engines.

According to several customer perception survey, Squeak and Rattle (S&R) is among the top most annoying defects. Consequently, GMB engineering design, development and validation process must be continuously improved and consistently applied to all platforms to guarantee that all products are free from squeaks and rattles. This paper introduces those concepts and discusses some strategies to eliminate or minimize S&R. Concepts and tests results are commented. Finally, the challenge in detection and analysis of S&R is discussed. Objective and subjective evaluation methodologies are being developed and suppliers training and integration have been improved

This work presents aspects related to research and development of high-speed steels for valve seat inserts application. Five series of materials were evaluated: high speed steel M3/2 infiltrated with copper during sintering; high speed steel M3/2 with Cu3P addition; high speed steel M3/2 with Cu3P addition and further copper infiltrated during sintering; high speed steel M3/2 mixed with iron powder; high speed steel M3/2 mixed with iron powder and niobium carbide. The physical and mechanical properties of the evaluated high-speed steels are presented in terms of densification, hardness, and radial mechanical strength. These properties are compared according to the materials processing and heat treatment.