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A low frequency vibration issue around 3.2 Hz occurs during a commercial heavy truck program development process, and it is linked to extremely uncomfortable driving and riding experiences. This work focuses on an analytical effort to resolve the issue by first building a full vehicle MBS (multi-body-system) model, and then carrying out vibration response analyses. The model validation is performed by using full vehicle testing in terms of structural modes and frequency response characteristics. In order to resolve the issue which is excited by tire non-uniformity, the influence of the cab suspension, frame modes, front leaf spring system and rear tandem suspension is analyzed. The root cause of the issue is found to be the poor isolation of the rear tandem suspension system. The analytical optimization effort establishes the resolution measure for the issue.

A challenge for the aerodynamic optimization of trucks is the limited availability of wind tunnels for testing full scale trucks. FAW wants to introduce a development process which is mainly based on CFD simulation in combination with some limited amount of wind tunnel testing. While maturity of CFD simulation for truck aerodynamics has been demonstrated in recent years, a complete validation is still required before committing to a particular process. A 70% scale model is built for testing in the Shanghai Automotive Wind Tunnel Center (SAWTC). Drag and surface pressures are measured for providing a good basis for comparison to the simulation results. The simulations are performed for the truck in the open road driving condition as well as in an initial digital model of the aerodynamic wind tunnel of SAWTC. A full size truck is also simulated in the open road driving condition to understand the scaling effect.

Trucks can carry heavy load and when applying the brakes during for example a mountain downhill or for an abrupt stop, the brake temperatures can rise significantly. Elevated temperatures in the drum brake region can reduce the braking efficiency or can even cause the brake system to fail, catch fire or even break. It therefore needs to be designed such to be able to transfer the heat out of its system by convection, conduction and/or radiation. All three heat transfer modes play an important role since the drum brakes of trucks are not much exposed to external airflow, a significant difference from disk brakes of passenger cars analyzed in previous studies. This makes it a complex heat transfer problem which is not easy to understand. Numerical methods provide insight by visualization of the different heat transfer modes. Presented is a numerical method that simulates the transient heat transfer of a truck drum brake system cooldown at constant driving speed.

The implementation of an advanced process for the aerodynamic development of cab-over type heavy trucks at China FAW Group Corporation (FAW) requires a rigorous validation of the tools employed in this process. The final objective of the aerodynamic optimization of a heavy truck is the reduction of the fuel consumption. The aerodynamic drag of a heavy truck contributes up to 50% of the overall resistance and thus fuel consumption. An accurate prediction of the aerodynamic drag under real world driving conditions is therefore very important. Tools used for the aerodynamic development of heavy trucks include Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), wind tunnels and track and road testing methods. CFD and wind tunnels are of particular importance in the early phase development.