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The automotive industry is continuously evolving, demanding innovative approaches to enhance testing methodologies and preventive identify potential issues. This paper proposes an advancement test approach in the area of the overall vehicle system included steering system and power train on a “Road to Rig” test bench. The research aims to revolutionize the conventional testing process by identifying faults at an early stage and eliminating the need to rely solely on field tests. The motivation behind this research is to optimize the test bench setup and bring it even closer to real field tests. Key highlights of the publication include the introduction of an expanded load spectrum, incorporating both steering angle and speed parameters along the test track. The load includes different route and driving profiles like on a freeway, overland and city drive in combination with the steering angles.

Though modal analysis is a common tool to evaluate the dynamic properties of a structure, there are still many individual decisions to be made during the process which are often based on experience and make it difficult for occasional users to gain reliable and correct results. One of those experience-based choices is the correct number and placement of reference points. This decision is especially important, because it must be made right in the beginning of the process and a wrong choice is only noticeable in the very end of the process. Picking the wrong reference points could result in incomplete modal analysis outcomes, as it might make certain modes undetectable, compounded by the user's lack of awareness about these missing modes. In the paper an innovative approach will be presented to choose the minimal number of mandatory reference points and their placement.

Electrified vehicles are particularly quiet, especially at low speeds due to the absence of combustion noises. This is why there are laws worldwide for artificial driving sounds to warn pedestrians. These sounds are generated using a so-called Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS) which must maintain certain minimum sound pressure levels in specific frequency ranges at low speeds. The creation of the sound currently involves an iterative and sometimes time-consuming process that combines composing the sound on a computer with measuring the levels with a car on an outside noise test track. This continues until both the legal requirements and the subjective demands of vehicle manufacturers are met. To optimize this process and reduce the measurement effort on the outside noise test track, the goal is to replace the measurement with a simulation for a significant portion of the development.

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.

The paper presents a theoretical framework for the detection and first-level preliminary identification of potential defects on aero-structure components while employing ultrasonic guided wave based structural health monitoring strategies, systems and tools. In particular, we focus our study on ground inspection using laser-Doppler scan of surface velocity field, which can also be partly reconstructed or monitored using point sensors and actuators on-board structurally integrated. Using direct wave field data, we first question the detectability of potential defects of unknown location, size, and detailed features. Defects could be manufacturing defects or variations, which may be acceptable from design and qualification standpoint; however, those may cause significant background signal artifacts in differentiating structure progressive damage or sudden failure like impact-induced damage and fracture.

Severe problem of aerodynamic heating and drag force are inherent with any hypersonic space vehicle like space shuttle, missiles etc. For proper design of vehicle, the drag force measurement become very crucial. Ground based test facilities are employed for these estimates along with any suitable force balance as well as sensors. There are many sensors (Accelerometer, Strain gauge and Piezofilm) reported in the literature that is used for evaluating the actual aerodynamic forces over test model in high speed flow. As per previous study, the piezofilm also become an alternative sensor over the strain gauges due to its simple instrumentation. For current investigation, the piezofilm and strain gauge sensors have mounted on same stress force balance to evaluate the response time as well as accuracy of predicted force at the same instant. However, these force balance need to be calibrated for inverse prediction of the force from recorded responses.

A novel method for Single Event Effect (SEE) Radiation Testing using Built-In Self-Test (BIST) feature of indigenously developed Vikram1601 processor is discussed. The novelty is that the usage of BIST avoids need of exhaustive test vectors to ensure test coverage of all the internal registers and physical memory to store them. So processor is the only element vulnerable to radiation damage during testing. The test design was carried out at VSSC, Trivandrum and the testing was carried out at IUAC, Delhi. In the first part, a brief introduction, need and methods of radiation testing of electronics especially SEE of radiation on Silicon based devices, different radiation effects, radiation damage mechanisms and testing methods are described. A brief introduction to Vikram1601 processor, the instruction – TST, used as BIST and testing scheme implementation using TST for studying the SEE is explained.

The Particle Number–Portable Emission Measurement System (PN-PEMS) came into force with Euro VI Phase E regulations starting January 1, 2022. However, positive ignition (PI) engines must comply from January 1, 2024. The delay was due to the unavailability of the PN-PEMS system that could withstand high concentrations of water typically present in the tailpipe (TP) of CNG vehicles, which was detrimental to the PN-PEMS systems. Thus, this study was designed to evaluate the condensation particle counter (CPC)-based PN-PEMS measurement capabilities that was upgraded to endure high concentration of water. The PN-PEMS measurement of solid particle number (SPN23) greater than 23 nm was compared against the laboratory-grade PN systems in four phases. Each phase differs based upon the PN-PEMS and PN system location and measurements were made from three different CNG engines. In the first phase, systems measured the diluted exhaust through constant volume sampler (CVS) tunnel.

Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking (P-AEB) is a technology designed to avoid or reduce the severity of vehicle to pedestrian collisions. This technology is currently assessed and evaluated via EuroNCAP and similar procedures in which a pedestrian test target is crossing the road, walking alongside the road, or stationary in the forward vehicle travel path. While these assessment methods serve the purpose of providing cross-comparison of technology performance in a standardized set of scenarios, there are many scenarios which could occur which are not considered or studied. By identifying and performing non-EuroNCAP, non-standardized scenarios using similar methodology, the robustness of P-AEB systems can be analyzed. These scenarios help identify areas of further development and consideration for future testing programs. Three scenarios were considered as a part of this work: straight line approach, curved path approach, and parking lot testing.

Verification and validation (V&V) of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is a challenging task. AVs must be thoroughly tested, to ensure their safe functionality in complex traffic situations including rare but safety-relevant events. Furthermore, AVs must mitigate risks and hazards that result from functional insufficiencies, as described in the Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) standard. SOTIF analysis includes iterative identification of driving scenarios that are not only unsafe, but also unknown. However, identifying SOTIF’s unknown-unsafe scenarios is an open challenge. In this paper we proposed a systematic optimization-based approach for identification of unknown-unsafe scenarios. The proposed approach consists of three main steps including data collection, feature extraction and optimization towards unknown unsafe scenarios.

As a key technology of intelligent transportation system, vehicle type recognition plays an important role in ensuring traffic safety,optimizing traffic management and improving traffic efficiency, which provides strong support for the development of modern society and the intelligent construction of traffic system. Aiming at the problems of large number of parameters, low detection efficiency and poor real-time performance in existing vehicle type recognition algorithms, this paper proposes an improved vehicle type recognition algorithm based on YOLOv5. Firstly, the lightweight network model MobileNet-V3 is used to replace the backbone feature extraction network CSPDarknet53 of the YOLOv5 model. The parameter quantity and computational complexity of the model are greatly reduced by replacing the standard convolution with the depthwise separable convolution, and enabled the model to maintain higher accuracy while having faster reasoning speed.

Most of the Automated Driving Systems (ADS) technology development is targeting urban areas; there is still much to learn about how ADS will impact rural transportation. The DriveOhio team deployed level-3 ADS-equipped prototype vehicles in rural Ohio with the goal of discovering technical challenges for ADS deployment in such environments. However, before the deployment on public roads, it was essential to test the ADS-equipped vehicle for their safety limitations. At Transportation Research Center Inc. (TRC Inc.) proving grounds, we tested one such prototype system on a closed test track with soft targets and robotic platforms as surrogates for other road users. This paper presents an approach to safely conduct testing for ADS prototype and assess its readiness for public road deployment. The main goal of this testing was to identify a safe Operational Design Domain (ODD) of this system by gaining better understanding of the limitations of the system.

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.

Water content estimation is a key problem for studying the PEM fuel cell. When several hundred fuel cells are connected in serial and their active surface area is enlarged for sufficient power, the difference between cells becomes significant with respect to voltage and water content. The voltage of each cell is measurable by the cell voltage monitor (CVM) while it is difficult to estimate water content of the individual. Resistance of the polymer electrolyte membrane is monotonically related to its water content, so that the new online high frequency resistance (HFR) measurement technique is investigated to identify the uniformity of water content between cells and analyze its sensitivity to operating conditions in this paper. Firstly, the accuracy of the proposed technique is experimentally validated to be comparable to that of a commercialized electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurement equipment.

Lightweight design is a key factor in general engineering design practice, however, it often conflicts with fatigue durability. This paper presents a way for improving the effectiveness of fatigue performance dominated optimization, demonstrated through a case study on suspension brackets for heavy-duty vehicles. This case study is based on random load data collected from fatigue durability tests in proving grounds, and fatigue failures of the heavy-duty vehicle suspension brackets were observed and recorded during the tests. Multi-objective fatigue optimization was introduced by employing multiaxial time-domain fatigue analysis under random loads combined with the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II with archives.