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Safety continues to be one of the most important factors in motor vehicle design, manufacturing, and marketing.  This course provides a comprehensive overview of these critical automotive safety considerations: injury and anatomy; human tolerance and biomechanics; occupant protection; testing; and federal legislation. The knowledge shared at this course enables participants to be more aware of safety considerations and to better understand and interact with safety experts. This course has been approved by the Accreditation Commission for Traffic Accident Reconstruction (ACTAR) for 18 Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

Contact our Sales Team! The ADAS to Automated Driving Digital Summit will virtually bring together engineering professionals from OEMs, suppliers, technology and corporate and academic research. And now, with no travel required, the digital summit will reach an even broader international audience from North America, Europe, and Asia.

The ADAS to Automated Driving Digital Summit will virtually bring together engineering professionals from OEMs, suppliers, technology and corporate and academic research. And now, with no travel required, the digital summit will reach an even broader international audience from North America, Europe, and Asia.

SAE J3078 provides test methods and criteria for the evaluation of the operator enclosure environment in earth-moving machinery as defined in ISO 6165. SAE J3078/1 gives the terms and definitions which are used in other parts of SAE J3078. It is applicable to Off-Road Self-Propelled Work Machines as defined in SAE J1116 and tractors and machinery for agriculture and forestry as defined in ANSI/ASAE S390.

Understanding left-turn vehicle-pedestrian accident mechanisms is critical for developing accident-prevention systems. This study aims to clarify the features of driver behavior focusing on drivers’ gaze, vehicle speed, and time to collision (TTC) during left turns at intersections on left-hand traffic roads. Herein, experiments with a sedan and light-duty truck (< 7.5 tons GVW) are conducted under four conditions: no pedestrian dummy (No-P), near-side pedestrian dummy (Near-P), far-side pedestrian dummy (Far-P) and near-and-far side pedestrian dummies (NF-P). For NF-P, sedans have a significantly shorter gaze time for left-side mirrors compared with light-duty trucks. The light-duty truck’s average speed at the initial line to the intersection (L1) and pedestrian crossing line (L0) is significantly lower than the sedan’s under No-P, Near-P, and NF-P conditions, without any significant difference between any two conditions.

Abstract For taking counter measures in advance to prevent accidental risks, it is of significance to explore the causes and evolutionary mechanism of ship collisions. This article collects 70 ship collision accidents in Zhejiang coastal waters, where 60 cases are used for modeling while 10 cases are used for verification (testing). By analyzing influencing factors (IFs) and causal chains of accidents, a Bayesian network (BN) model with 19 causal nodes and 1 consequential node is constructed. Parameters of the BN model, namely the conditional probability tables (CPTs), are determined by mathematical statistics methods and Bayesian formulas. Regarding each testing case, the BN model’s prediction on probability of occurrence is above 80% (approaching 100% indicates the certainty of occurrence), which verifies the availability of the model. Causal analysis based on the backward reasoning process shows that H (Human error) is the main IF resulting in ship collisions.

The current focus in the ongoing development of autonomous driving systems (ADS) for heavy duty vehicles is that of vehicle operational safety. To this end, developers and researchers alike are working towards a complete understanding of the operating environments and conditions that autonomous vehicles are subject to during their mission. This understanding is critical to the testing and validation phases of the development of autonomous vehicles and allows for the identification of both the nominal and edge case scenarios encountered by these systems. Previous work by the authors saw the development of a comprehensive scenario generation framework to identify an operating domain specification (ODS), or external and internal conditions an autonomous driving system can expect to encounter on its mission to form critical scenario groups for autonomous vehicle testing and validating using statistical patterns, clustering, and correlation.

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.

Nowadays, Bismuth (Bi) is being applied as an overlay material for engine bearings instead of Lead (Pb) which is an environmentally harmful material. Bi overlay has already been a solid performer in some automotive engine sectors due to its superior load carrying capacity and good robustness characteristic which are necessary to maintain its longevity during the lifetime of engines. The replacement is also seen on relatively larger size engines, such as Trucks and Off-highway heavy duty applications. Basically, these applications require higher power output than passenger cars, and the expected component lifecycle becomes longer. Though Bi has similar material characteristic to traditional Pb, it becomes challenging for the material alone to satisfy these requirements. Polymer overlay is known for its superior anti-wear performance and longer lifetime due to less adhesion against a steel counterpart than metallic materials (included Bi).

Lithium-ion batteries serve as the main power source for contemporary electric vehicles. Safeguarding these batteries against damage is paramount, as it can trigger accelerated performance deterioration, potential fire hazards, environmental threats, and more. This study explores damage progression of a commercial vehicle lithium-ion battery module containing prismatic cells under indentation crush loading. We employed computational simulations of mechanical loading tests to investigate this behavior. Physical tests involved subjecting modules to low-speed (0.05 m/s) indentations using a V-shaped stainless-steel wedge, under six unique loading conditions. During the tests, force, and voltage change with wedge displacement were monitored. Utilizing experimental insights, we constructed a finite element model, which included key components of the battery module, such as the prismatic cells, steel frames, and various plastic parts.

The current battery carrier for commercial vehicles is made of steel and is designed to hold two batteries weighing approximately 80 kg to 100 kg. However, this battery carrier faces several issues including corrosion, chemical reactivity, high maintenance requirements and its heavy weight. To tackle these challenges, a fiber-reinforced composite battery carrier is designed and developed specifically for commercial vehicles. The objective is to identify a solution that can meet the performance requirements of both static and dynamic loading, thereby reducing the overall weight. The proposed composite battery carrier offers a lightweight design, requires minimal maintenance, possesses high tensile strength and stiffness and is corrosion and chemical resistant. Furthermore, it provides the flexibility to integrate battery cover locking arrangements for added convenience and security.

Recent advancements towards autonomous heavy-duty vehicles are directly associated with increased interconnectivity and software driven features. Consequently, rise of this technological trend is bringing forth safety and cybersecurity challenges in form of new threats, hazards and vulnerabilities. As per the recent UN vehicle regulation 155, several risk-based security models and assessment frameworks have been proposed to counter the growing cybersecurity issues, however, the high budgetary cost to develop the tool and train personnel along with high risk of leakage of trade secrets, hinders the automotive manufacturers from adapting these third party solutions. This paper proposes an automated Threat Assessment & Risk Analysis (TARA) framework aligned with the standard requirements, offering an easy to use and fully customizable framework. The proposed framework is tailored specifically for heavy-duty vehicular networks and it demonstrates its effectiveness on a case study.

Threaded joints are considered the most basic of components. Although in use for over a century, significant problems still exist with their usage. Wheel bolt loosening in overloaded segments such as HD tippers and high-speed intercity buses poses a safety challenge for drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. Wheel nut loosening is a notable cause of service, fretting, and cracks in the mating components; contributing a significant chunk of warranty cost to the company. The need of the hour is to reinforce these joints while keeping resources at bay. This paper establishes a methodology for the evaluation and design of a safe wheel bolt joint interface including key parameters such as embedding, axial forces, and shear forces. It is necessary to obtain the minimum preload requirement for a wheel bolt joint to hold the clamped surfaces intact, which if not maintained otherwise would cause relative movement, play, shear load onto the bolt, and eventually failure.

Building upon prior research, this paper compares computer simulations to a previously conducted rollover crash test of a tractor-semitrailer. The effects of torsional stiffness were elucidated during the correlation of simulations to the rollover test. A commercially available vehicle dynamics and reconstruction software was used for the simulation. Unique aspects of the rollover crash test were modeled in the simulation. A tractor-semitrailer quarter-turn rollover crash test conducted by IMMI was reconstructed using impact and vehicle dynamics models within the simulation software HVE (Human, Vehicle & Environment). The SIMON (SImulation MOdel Non-linear) module and the DyMESH (Dynamic MEchanical SHell) module within HVE were used. During the IMMI test, onboard instrumentation recorded acceleration and roll rate data in six degrees of freedom to characterize both tractor and semitrailer dynamics before and during the rollover event.

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.

SAE International will host a series of webinars that will cover the recently published and completely new Euro NCAP Rating Scheme for 2026 and beyond. This rating scheme supports the Euro NCAP Vision 2030 Roadmap. This is a recording of the session held in March 2024.

Wheel hubs with drum brakes of heavy-duty vehicles rarely broke, but some suddenly cracked in the 2000s. The cause of damage was said to be a lack of hub strength. However, the case was suspicious because the hubs were produced according to the design guidelines by the JSAE. In the 1990s, brake shoe-lining materials were changed from asbestos to non-asbestos for people’s health. The brake squeal and abnormal self-lock frequently occurred because of the increased friction coefficient between drum and shoe lining in the case of the leading–trailing type. The mechanical friction coefficient changes with the material and the contact angle, which varies with the wear of shoe lining and the drum temperature. In the previous report, the deformation of the wheel hub under the abnormal self-lock was verified by observing the change of hub attitude in model test equipment.