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Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is an emerging sheet metal prototyping technology where a part is formed as one or more stylus tools are moving in a pre-determined path and deforming the sheet metal locally while the sheet blank is clamped along its periphery. A deformation analysis of incremental forming process is presented in this paper. The analysis includes the development of an analytical model for strain distributions based on part geometry and tool paths; and numerical simulations of the forming process with LS-DYNA. A skew cone is constructed and used as an example for the study. Analytical and numerical results are compared, and excellent correlations are found. It is demonstrated that the analytical model developed in this paper is reliable and efficient in the prediction of strain distributions for incremental forming process.

The efforts of the ISO “Test Variability Task Force” have been aimed at improving the understanding and at reducing brake dynamometer test variability during performance testing. In addition, dynamometer test results have been compared and correlated to vehicle testing. Even though there is already a vast amount of anecdotal evidence confirming the fact that different procedures generate different friction coefficients on the same brake corner, the availability of supporting data to the industry has been elusive up to this point. To overcome this issue, this paper focuses on assessing friction levels, friction coefficient sensitivity, and repeatability under ECE, GB, ISO, JASO, and SAE laboratory friction evaluation tests.

The Service Bay Diagnostic System (SBDS) will be designed to assist the dealership technician in diagnosing and repairing Ford Motor vehicles. The system hardware will be configured around a Service Bay Computer with mass storage capability and auxiliary service equipment. Major system features include: guided service writer/customer interaction, interactive vehicle diagnostics, information management. capabilities, and an additional aid to identifying intermittent failures through the use of a portable over-the-road data acquisition device. In order to assist the technician in properly diagnosing the causal factor, the Service Bay Computer System will also be enhanced through the use of an expert system knowledge base.

We report measurements of interior automotive cabin forced acoustical response (SPL) as a function of frequency from 1 Hz to 200 Hz. The acoustical response was measured at eight positions in the vehicle tested, approximating the positions of passengers and points in between passengers. Variances in experimental data arising from the manner in which measuring equipment is setup in a particular vehicle are reported, and variations in data taken in similarly equipped vehicles are also reported. The purpose of these tests is to determine the measurement variability of a typical vehicle acoustic test.

Rapid Prototyping, Fabrication and Tooling is a process that blends a series of technologies (machines, tools, and methods) capable of generating physical objects directly from a CAD database. The process dramatically reduces the time spent during product development by allowing for fast visualization, verification, iteration, optimization, and fabrication of parts and tools. Many new techniques of tooling have been and are being developed by using rapid fabricated parts. These are having a dramatic impact on both timing and costs throughout the automotive industry. One area that these methods can be utilized to their full potential is motorsports. Of particular interest is the growing use of bridge tooling to provide first article through production intent parts that promote cost effective changes.

There are a number of benefits from Ford Motor Company's participation in motorsports. This paper will describe how an engineering team developed a CAE process to assist in the design of a race car to meet impact requirements, with the technology transfer benefit of improved impact performance of composite structures in passenger cars. In 1997/98, a CAE process was developed and applied in the design and test of Formula One race car composite impact structures. For this particular engineering effort, a Ford proprietary software program, COMP-COLLAPSE, was the primary analysis tool that was utilized to successfully predict impact performance. As a result, COMP-COLLAPSE was used extensively in the design of race car composite impact structures. There were two beneficiaries from this effort: Race Vehicles: Improved vehicle impact performance as well as design improvement in crush efficiency, packaging, weight, and manufacturing.

Lookup tables and functions are widely used in real-time embedded automotive applications to conserve scarce processor resources. To minimize the resource utilization, these lookup tables (LUTs) commonly use custom data structures. The lookup function code is optimized to process these custom data structures. The legacy routines for these lookup functions are very efficient and have been in production for many years. These lookup functions and the corresponding data structures are typically used for calibration tables. The third-party calibration tools are specifically tailored to support these custom data structures. These tools assist the calibrators in optimizing the control algorithm performance for the targeted environment for production. Application software typically contains a mix of both automatically generated software and manually developed code. Some of the same calibration tables may be used in both auto generated and hand-code [ 1 ] [ 2 ].

When considering ride comfort and precision there are lots of components in the vehicle suspensions that have influence in this behavior and some ride occurrences (mainly higher frequencies) are rubber bushing responsibility but due their compliance, other vehicle attributes, steering and handling, can be affected. So the correct components tuning can maintain or improve vehicle attributes to address desired brand DNA and vehicle its specific needs. These studies were done considering the elastokinematics of front axle only due need of improve its comfort concerning higher frequencies (impacts and harshness). In addiction, correlation between subjective evaluation and objective data acquisition/post processing is desirable to optimize development time. Based in subjective directional, the activities time was reduced and final configuration reached faster.

The constant Q transform consists of a geometrically spaced filter bank, which is close to the wavelet transform due to the feature of its increasing time resolution for high frequencies. On the other hand, it can be processed using the well-known FFT algorithm. In this sense, this tool is a middle term between Fourier and wavelet analyses, which can be used for stationary and non-stationary signals. Automotive NVH signals can be stationary (e.g., idle, cruise) or non-stationary, i.e., time-varying signals (e.g., door closing/opening, run-up, rundown). The objective of this work is to propose the use of the constant Q transform, developed originally for musical signal processing, for automotive NVH (run up, impact strip and door closing) time-frequency analyses. Also, similarities and differences of the proposed tool when compared with Fourier and wavelet analyses are addressed.

Seat Effective Amplitude Transmissibility (SEAT) values can be obtained from direct measurements at seat track and top or estimated from transmissibility data and seat track input. Vertical transmissibility was measured for sixteen seats and six subjects on the Ford Vehicle Vibration Simulator, and these 96 functions used to estimate the seat top response for rough road input. SEAT values were calculated, and good correlation to values computed from direct seat top measurements obtained (R2 of 0.86). Averaging transmissibilities and direct seat measurements over the 6 subjects to obtain correlations for the 16 seats improved R2 to 0.94, validating this approach.

This paper proposes a novel algorithm. This algorithm is called Self-Organizing Fuzzy Neural Network (SOFNN). SOFNN revolutionizes how researchers apply control theories, image/signal processing on control systems and other applications. In general, SOFNN is an identification technique that automatically initiates, builds and fine-tunes the required network parameters. SOFNN evaluates required structures without predefined parameters or expressions regarding systems. SOFNN sets out to learn and configure a system's characteristics. Self-constructing and self-tuning features enable SOFNN to handle complex, non-linear, and time-varying systems with higher accuracy, making systems identification easier. SOFNN constructs and fine-tunes the system parameter through two phases. The two phases are the construction and the parameter-tuning phase. The two phases run concurrently allowing SOFNN to identify systems on-line.

A flexible, easily configuration data acquisition system was designed and built for detailed studies of the steady state and dynamic properties of lean NOx traps for an engine dynamometer environment. The system is based on the industry standard VXI backplane. The overriding design philosophy was to design and develop a data acquisition system that was user friendly and could be operated easily by engine laboratory technicians, as well as by test engineers. The primary requirements guiding the design were the following: (1) the ability easily to configure, save, recall, modify, and print test configurations. (2) The ability to configure the gain, channel name, and engineering units for each analog channel. (3) The ability to trigger from one analog input channel. (4) A provision for numeric auto-incrementing of data file names. (5) The ability to save data in Excel™ compatible ASCII format. (6) The utilization of off-the shelf VXI hardware.

A series of tests have been performed on a production vehicle to determine the characteristics of the external turbulent flow field in wind tunnel and road conditions. Empirical formulas are developed to use the measured data as source levels for a Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) model of the vehicle structural and acoustical responses. Exterior turbulent flow and acoustical subsystems are used to receive power from the source excitations. This allows for both the magnitudes and wavelengths of the exterior excitations to be taken into account - a necessary condition for consistently accurate results. Comparisons of measured and calculated interior sound levels show good correlation.

A new experimental methodology has been developed to quantify spindle loads of a vehicle under actual operational conditions. The methodology applies an indirect six degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) frequency response function (FRF) measurement technique to obtain three translation/force and three rotation/moment FRFs of the suspension system of the vehicle. The Inverse Frequency Response Function (IFRF) method estimates the spindle loads under operational conditions. The feasibility and applicability of the developed methodology for vehicle road NVH applications was experimentally demonstrated. The results show that the methodology provides accurate spindle load estimation over a broad frequency range. This methodology can be used for benchmarking and target setting of spindle loads to achieve desired road NVH performance as well as for diagnosing root causes in problem solving applications.

An experimental study of the performance of a reverse tumble, DISI engine is reported. Specific fuel consumption and engine-out emissions have been investigated for both homogeneous and stratified modes of fuel injection. Trends in performance with varying AFR, EGR, spark and injection timings have been explored. It is shown that neural networks can be trained to describe these trends accurately for even the most complex case of stratified charge operation with exhaust gas recirculation.

Powertrain mounts are one of the important design characteristics of a vehicle. Powertrain is mostly mounted to the front subframe and once installed in a vehicle, powertrain mounting has an important role in determining the vehicle vibration characteristics. A good mounting system isolates engine input vibration from the vehicle body and minimizes the effect of road inputs to the customer. This paper discusses results of several dynamic models as they relate to noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) and compares the accuracy of these models. Various powertrain models are studied and their accuracy in comparison with full a vehicle model is discussed.

A number of advancements have been made in the coulometric sulfur trace instrumental technique for the real-time measurement of engine oil economy. These advancements include modification of the coulometric cell to improve reliability and reproducibility. The instrument has been interfaced with a microcomputer for instrument control as well as data acquisition, storage, and analysis. Studies were undertaken which demonstrate sufficient sensitivity and linearity for determination of engine oil economy at levels better than 10,000 miles/quart. Applications to steady-state engine oil consumption mapping and to instantaneous oil consumption during transient engine cycling are described. These instruments are being produced by an outside supplier for use in various company locations in both the engine production and engine research environments.

This paper is the second in the series of documents designed to record the progress of a series of SAE documents - SAE J2836™, J2847, J2931, & J2953 - within the Plug-In Electric Vehicle (PEV) Communication Task Force. This follows the initial paper number 2010-01-0837, and continues with the test and modeling of the various PLC types for utility programs described in J2836/1™ & J2847/1. This also extends the communication to an off-board charger, described in J2836/2™ & J2847/2 and includes reverse energy flow described in J2836/3™ and J2847/3. The initial versions of J2836/1™ and J2847/1 were published early 2010. J2847/1 has now been re-opened to include updates from comments from the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), Smart Grid Architectural Committee (SGAC) and Cyber Security Working Group committee (SCWG).

The development of embedded systems in automotive environment has brought a strong expansion in the number of applications dependent of programmable devices. A failure in any of these systems may cause different types of damages. Therefore, it requires a high confidence in their operation. Many of these faults are inserted during the coding process. A tool for formal verification of the implemented code could allow the detection of possible errors that could not be encountered during the testing phase. In this paper, we propose a method for verifying software from the reduced model of the software built automatically with information from multiple traces of program executions. To illustrate the application of the proposed method a case study for an automotive electronic module that controls the windshield wiper is presented.