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Design and Manufacturing of an Inclinometer sensing element for launch vehicle applications Tony M Shaju, Nirmal Krishna, G Nagamalleswara Rao, Pradeep K Scientist/Engineer, ISRO Inertial Systems Unit, Vattiyoorkavu, Trivandrum, India - 695013 Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) uses indigenously developed launch vehicles like PSLV, GSLV, LVM3 and SSLV for placing remote sensing and communication satellites along with spacecrafts for other important scientific applications into earth bound orbits. Navigation systems present in the launch vehicle play a pivotal role in achieving the intended orbits for these spacecrafts. During the assembly of these navigation packages on the launch vehicle, it is required to measure the initial tilt of the navigation sensors for any misalignment corrections, which is given as input to the navigation software. A high precision inclinometer is required to measure these tilts with a resolution of 1 arc-second.

Brake pulsation is a low frequency vibration phenomenon in brake judder. In this study, a simulation approach has been developed to understand the physics behind brake pulsation employing a full vehicle dynamics CAE model. The full vehicle dynamic model was further studied to understand the impact of suspension tuning variation to brake pulsation performance. Brake torque variation (BTV) due to brake thickness variation from uneven rotor wear was represented mathematically in a sinusoidal form. The wheel assembly vibration from the brake torque variation is transmitted to driver interface points such as the seat track and the steering wheel. The steering wheel lateral acceleration at the 12 o’clock position, driver seat acceleration, and spindle fore-aft acceleration were reviewed to explore the physics of brake pulsation. It was found that the phase angle between the left and right brake torque generated a huge variation in brake pulsation performance.

Tire forces and moments play an important role in vehicle dynamics and safety. X-by-wire chassis components including active suspension, electronic powered steering, by-wire braking, etc can take the tire forces as inputs to improve vehicle’s dynamic performance. In order to measure the accurate dynamic wheel load, most of the researches focused on the kinematic parameters such as body longitudinal and lateral acceleration, load transfer and etc. In this paper, the authors focus on the suspension system, avoiding the dependence on accurate mass and aerodynamics model of the whole vehicle. The geometry of the suspension is equated by the spatial parallel mechanism model (RSSR model), which improves the calculation speed while ensuring the accuracy. A suspension force observer is created, which contains parameters including spring damper compression length, push rod force, knuckle accelerations, etc., combing the kinematic and dynamic characteristic of the vehicle.

The performance of suspension system has a direct impact on the riding comfort and smoothness. For the traditional suspension can not effectively alleviate the impact of road surface and the poor anti-vibration performance, The dynamics model of vehicle suspension system is established, and the control model of vehicle four-degree-of-freedom active suspension is designed with fuzzy control strategy. On this basis, a comprehensive simulation model of the control model of vehicle active suspension coupled with road excitation is established. and the ride comfort of vehicles under different types of suspension are tested through Simulink. The simulation results show that compared with the passive suspension, the reduction of vehicle acceleration and dynamic deformation of the active suspension controlled by fuzzy PID can reach 33.76% and 22.45%. and the reduction of pitch Angle speed and dynamic load of the active suspension controlled by fuzzy PID can reach 16.18% and 10.72%.

Intelligent tyres can offer crucial insights into tyre dynamics, serving as a fundamental information source for vehicle state estimation and thereby enabling vehicular safety control. Among the numerous tyre parameters, slip ratio stands out as a direct influencer of vehicle motion characteristics. Accurate estimation of tyre slip ratio is essential for vehicle safety. Firstly, an analysis of the fundamental composition of tyres was conducted, and appropriate simplifications were applied to the tyre structure. Additionally, a finite element model of the tyre was constructed using ABAQUS software. To validate the reliability of the model, a real vehicle testing system was established, consisting of the experimental vehicle, data acquisition system, and supervisory computer. The reliability of the finite element model was confirmed by assessing the consistency of acceleration signals in three different directions of the tyre.

Off-roading is the scenario of driving a vehicle on unpaved surfaces such as sand, gravel, riverbeds, rocks, and other natural terrain. Vehicle designed for that purpose requires jumping from height due to uneven surfaces/patches. This also requires them to sustain a high amount of loads acting upon them on impact. Thus, off-roading vehicles should not only provide intended vehicle dynamics performance but at the same time should be durable as well. Drop test which is done in a controlled environment is a widely used method to validate the durability of vehicle in such scenarios wherein the vehicle is dropped from a certain predefined height. In Multibody dynamics simulation, drop test was replicated and acceleration data computed at different locations in the vehicle were correlated with actual physical test data. Correlation was done for different drop heights. This paper presents relevant details of the virtual vehicle modeling, loadcase, test data & subsequent correlation.

As the main power source of new energy vehicles, the durability and fatigue characteristics of the battery pack directly affect the performance of the vehicle. The battery pack system was modelled using multi-body dynamics software, with 7 and 13 degree of freedom models developed. Using the established model, the intrinsic properties of the battery pack are computationally analyzed. To calculate the dynamic characteristics, a sinusoidal displacement excitation is applied to the wheel centre of mass, and the displacement and acceleration of the battery pack centre of mass are calculated for both models.The displacement and acceleration curves at the centre of mass of the battery pack of the two models are compared. The results show that the amplitude of the displacement and acceleration curves at the centre of mass of the 13 degrees of freedom model of the battery pack has decreased significantly.

Due to the high center of gravity of medium-duty vehicles, rollover accidents can easily occur during high-speed cornering and lane changes. In order to prevent the deformation of the body structure, which would restrict the survival space and cause compression injuries to occupants, it is necessary to investigate methods for mitigating these incidents. This paper establishes a numerical model of right-side rollover for a commercial medium-duty vehicle in accordance with ECE R66 regulations, and the accuracy of the model is verified by experiment. According to the results, the material and size parameters of the key components of the right side pillar are selected as design variables. The response result matrix was constructed using the orthogonal design method for total mass, energy absorption, maximum collision acceleration, and minimum distance from the survival space.

The on-ramp merging driving scenario is challenging for achieving the highest-level autonomous driving. Current research using reinforcement learning methods to address the on-ramp merging problem of automated vehicles (AVs) is mainly designed for a single AV, treating other vehicles as part of the environment. This paper proposes a control framework for cooperative on-ramp merging of multiple AVs based on multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL). This framework facilitates AVs on the ramp and adjacent mainline to learn a coordinate control policy for their longitudinal and lateral motions based on the environment observations. Unlike the hierarchical architecture, this paper integrates decision and control into a unified optimal control problem to solve an on-ramp merging strategy through MADRL.

This paper presents an integrated modeling approach for real-time discretionary lane-changing decisions by autonomous vehicles, aiming to achieve human-like behavior. The approach incorporates a two-player normal-form game and a novel risk field method. The normal-form game represents the strategic interactions among traffic participants. It captures the trade-offs between lane-changing benefits and risks based on vehicle motion states during a lane change. By continuously determining the Nash equilibrium of the game at each time step, the model decides when it is appropriate to change the lane. A novel risk field method is integrated with the game to model risks in the game pay-offs. The risk field introduces regions along the desired target lane with different time headway ranges and risk weights, capturing traffic participants' complex risk perceptions and considerations in lane-changing scenarios.

Driver’s license examinations require the driver to perform either a parallel parking or a similar maneuver as part of the on-road evaluation of the driver’s skills. Self-driving vehicles that are allowed to operate on public roads without a driver should also be able to perform such tasks successfully. With this motivation, the S-shaped maneuverability test of the Ohio driver’s license examination is chosen here for automatic execution by a self-driving vehicle with drive-by-wire capability and longitudinal and lateral controls. The Ohio maneuverability test requires the driver to start within an area enclosed by four pylons and the driver is asked to go to the left of the fifth pylon directly in front of the vehicle in a smooth and continuous manner while ending in a parallel direction to the initial one. The driver is then asked to go backwards to the starting location of the vehicle without stopping the vehicle or hitting the pylons.

Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI) is the most common type of traumatic brain injury, and it is associated with the linear and rotational accelerations resulting from head impacts, which often occurs in traffic related and sports accidents. To investigate the degree of influence of linear and rotational acceleration on DAI, a two-factor, two-level rat head impact experimental protocol involving linear and rotational acceleration was established using the L4(23) orthogonal table in this paper. Following the protocol, rats head was injured and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was performed at 24h post-injury to obtain the whole brain DAI injury, and the fractional anisotropy (FA) value of the corpus callosum was selected as the evaluation indicator. Using analysis of variance, the sum of squared deviations for the evaluation indicators was calculated to determine the degree of influence of linear acceleration and rotational acceleration on DAI. The results show that, 1.

The tire cornering stiffness plays a vital role in the functionality of vehicle dynamics control systems, particularly when it comes to stability and path tracking controllers. This parameter relies on various external variables such as the tire/ambient temperature, tire wear condition, the road surface state, etc. Ensuring a reliable estimation of the cornering stiffness value is crucial for control systems. This ensures that these systems can accurately compute actuator requests in a wide range of driving conditions. In this paper, a novel estimation method is introduced that relies solely on standard vehicle sensor data, including data such as steering wheel angles, longitudinal acceleration, lateral acceleration, yaw rate, and vehicle speed, among others. Initially, the vehicle's handling characteristics are deduced by estimating the understeer gradient.

In-cabin Noise at low frequency (due to engine or road excitation) is a major issue for NVH engineers. Usually, noise transfer function (NTF) analysis is carried out, due to absence of accurate actual loads for sound pressure level (SPL) analysis. But NTF analysis comes with the challenge of having too many paths (~20 trimmed body attachment locations: engine and suspension mounts, along with 3 directions for each) to work on, which is cumbersome. Physical test transfer path analysis (TPA) is a process of root cause analysis, by which critical contributing paths can be obtained for a problem peak frequency. In addition to that, loads at the attachment points of trimmed body of test vehicle can be derived. Both these outputs are conventionally used in CAE analysis to work on either NTF or SPL. The drawback of this conventional approach is that the critical bands and paths suggested are based on the problem peak frequency of test vehicle which may be different in CAE.

The goal of this study was to use naturalistic driving data to characterize the motion of vehicles making right turns at signalized intersections. Right-turn maneuvers from 13 intersections were extracted from the Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) database and categorized based on whether or not the vehicle came to a stop prior to making its turn. Out of the vehicles that did stop, those that were the first and second in line at the intersection were isolated. This resulted in 186 stopped first-in-line turns, 91 stopped second-in-line turns, and 353 no stop turns. Independent variables regarding the maneuver, including driver’s sex and age, vehicle type, speed, and longitudinal and lateral acceleration were extracted. The on-board video was reviewed to categorize the road as dry/wet and if it was day/night. Aerial photographs of the intersections were obtained, and the inner radius of the curve was measured using the curb as a reference.

This work aims to present the application of mode coupling to a Formula Student racing vehicle and propose a solution. The major modes of a vehicle are heave, pitch, roll, and warp. All these modes are highly coupled – which means changing suspension rates or geometry will affect all of them – while alleviating some and making others worse characteristics. Decoupling these modes, or at least some of them, would provide more control over suspension setup and more refined race car dynamics for a given layout of the racetrack. This could improve mechanical grip and yield significant performance improvements in closed-circuit racing. If exploited well, this approach could also assist in the operation of the vehicle at an optimal kinematic state of the suspension systems, to gain the best wheel orientations and maximize grip from the tires under the high lateral accelerations and varied excitations seen on a typical road course.

Reconstruction of inline crashes between vehicles with a low closing speed, so-called “low speed” crashes, continues to be a class of vehicle collisions that reconstructionists require specific methods to handle. In general, these collisions tend to be difficult to reconstruct due primarily to the lack of, or limited amount of, physical evidence available after the crash. Traditional reconstruction methods such as impulse-momentum (non-residual damage based) and CRASH3 (residual damage based) both are formulated without considering tire forces of the vehicles. These forces can be important in this class of collisions. Additionally, the CRASH3 method depends on the use of stiffness coefficients for the vehicles obtained from high-speed crash tests. The question of the applicability of these (high-speed) stiffness coefficients to collisions producing significantly less deformation than experimental crashes on which they are generated, raises questions of the applicability.

ISO 26262-1:2018 defines the fault tolerant time interval (FTTI) as the minimum time span from the occurrence of a fault within an electrical / electronic system to a possible occurrence of a hazardous event. FTTI provides a time limit within which compliant vehicle safety mechanisms must detect and react to faults capable of posing risk of harm to persons. This makes FTTI a vital safety characteristic for system design. Common automotive industry practice accommodates recording fault times of occurrence definitively. However, current practice for defining the time of hazardous event onset relies upon subjective judgements. This paper presents a novel method to define hazardous event onset more objectively. The method introduces the Streetscope Collision Hazard Measure (SHMTM) and a refined approach to hazardous event classification.

Typical everyday driving scenarios involve acceleration ranges which are relevant to accident reconstruction. Understanding the motions and accelerations endured in common driving maneuvers can help quantify the accelerations of vehicles and occupants when reconstructing a collision. This paper evaluates various everyday driving conditions, such as traversing speed bumps and dips, and impacting parking blocks. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the accelerations experienced during everyday driving scenarios to provide a reference for impact severity analysis in the field of accident reconstruction.

This paper validates the single-track vehicle driver model available in PC-Crash simulation software. The model is tested, and its limitations are described. The introduction of this model eliminated prior limitations that PC-Crash had for simulating motorcycle motion. Within PC-Crash, a user-defined path can be established for a motorcycle, and the software will generate motion consistent with the user-defined path (within the limits of friction and stability) and calculate the motorcycle lean (roll) generated by following that path at the prescribed speed, braking, or acceleration levels. In this study, the model was first examined for a simple scenario in which a motorcycle traversed a pre-defined curve at several speeds. This resulted in the conclusion that the single-track driver model in PC-Crash yielded motorcycle lean angles consistent with the standard, simple lean angle formula widely available in the literature.