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In automotive Body-In-White (BIW) structures, stiffness and the fatigue behavior is greatly influenced by the properties of its joints. Spot welding is one of the most widely used process for joining of sheet metals in BIW. Spot weld fatigue life under Accelerated Durability Test (ADT) is crucial for durability performance of BIW structures. Experience of BIW validations highlighted more number of spot weld failures in CAE when compared to actual tests. Hence, lot of iterations in the form of design modifications are required to be carried out to make these spot welds meet the targets which increases design & development time as well as cost. Current practice uses force-based approach for predicting spot weld fatigue life in CAE. To improve the spot weld fatigue life correlation, extensive study has been carried out on the approaches used for calculating spot weld fatigue life, namely force & stress-based approaches.

As automobiles become increasingly quieter, the wiper operation noise becomes more noticeable by the customer. This paper deals with the experimental approach and the methodology to investigate the Friction induced wiping noise. Role of design in a wiper system plays a very imperative task in meeting the performance of wipers but at the same time it does not cater to the NVH issues. Some of the important design parameters which affect the NVH properties of the wiper system are highlighted in this paper. For better understanding of the system some of the best in class vehicles for SUV category were tested and compared with our test vehicle. In this study more importance given to analytical part which is more important to investigate and in depth study of the friction induced noise. For analytical study some techniques such as time frequency domain i.e. Wavelet transforms, frequency domain and time domain where extensively used.

This paper deals with new trends in materials & heat treatment in automotive transmission shafting. The material is S48C a low carbon alloy steel and material for automotive shaft special significance as it reduces overall cost in vehicle transmission shafts. Conventional method of shaft heat heat-treatment is case hardening for 20MnCr5. S48C is low-carbon alloy steel. This is an alternate proposal to 20MnCr5.There are lot of advantages in induction hardening over case hardening. Also induction hardening process with S48C material becomes cheaper than case-hardening with 20MnCr5.Strength and resistance to stress must therefore be carefully considered during the material selection and heat-treatment process. We have done Static torsion test for 20MnCr5 (case hardened steel) and S48C (induction hardened shaft). Test results were comparable with 20MnCr5 (case hardened steel). Also after test a metallurgical inspection was done on an S48C (induction hardened shaft).

Shift quality of a manual transmission is a critical characteristic that is requires utmost care by the designers while structuring the transmission. Shift quality is affected by many factors viz. synchronizer design, shift fork design, shifter design, gear design, transmission oil selection etc. Designers have realized that shift fork is critical element for improving shift feel of a transmission. This paper focuses upon the reduction in weight of the overall transmission shift system by using steel inserts in aluminum shifter forks. No compromise on the stiffness and strength of the shift fork of a manual transmission is done. Stiffness and strength of shifter fork is optimized using contact pattern analysis and stiffness analysis on MSC Nastran. All the subsystem (i.e. synchronizer and the shift system component) are constrained to optimize the shift fork stiffness. A 5-speed manual transmission is used as an example to illustrate the same.

Automotive steel wheel is a critical component for human safety. For validating steel wheel various tests will be performed at component and vehicle level. Cornering test performed at vehicle level is one of the tests, where wheel will be validated for high cornering loads. Cornering test performed at vehicle level consists of three different events i.e., rotations of vehicle in track1, rotations of vehicle track 2 and rotations of vehicle in track3. As wheel will experience different loading in each of the events of cornering test, correlating the virtual Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with physical test is quite challenging. If in FEA we can predict the damage and life very near to the physical validation, we can create a safe wheel for high cornering loads without any test concerns. Vent hole shape and Hat depth are two important aspects in wheel disc design. Vent hole shape and size will influence the heat dissipation of braking.

Tensile Testing is one of the most used and highly reliable method of mechanical testing to evaluate the tensile properties of the material. However, there is a large scope for discussing the behavior of the metals based on the direction of rolling and the tensile specimen size used for testing. This paper discusses the variation observed in the tensile values along the direction of rolling and traverse to the direction of rolling for S460MC. It also evaluates the variation observed in the values based on the various gauge lengths (GL) commonly used in testing as per international standards (80mm, 50mm and 25mm GL). It is observed that perpendicular to the direction of rolling, the Yield and Tensile strength of the material increase marginally while the Elongation percentage (%E) decreases by a small margin irrespective of the gauge length taken into consideration.

In most cases, the properties of a metal are evaluated in their as rolled condition, prior to any work hardening or bake hardening. But in the Automotive World, these steels get work hardened during the forming process and bake hardened in the paint shop. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the variations in the performance of Dual Phase (DP) steels and understand the most optimized method of testing and property generation. This method can then be used to extrapolate to real automotive components. Dual Phase Steels or DP Steels contain a mixture of Ferrite & Martensite from which they derive their name. They are a part of the advanced high strength and ultra-high strength steels steel family according to World Auto Steels. The Ferrite phase, with its iron content contributes to the material displaying an increased level of ductility whilst, the martensitic phase provides the steel with increased mechanical strength.

Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) simulations are an integral part of the product development process in an automotive industry. The conventional approach involving pre-processing, solving and post-processing is highly time-consuming. Emerging digital technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) can be implemented in early stage of product development cycle to predict key performances without need of traditional CAE. Oil Canning loadcase simulates the displacement and buckling behavior of vehicle outer styling panels. A ML model trained using historical oil canning simulation results can be used to predict the maximum displacement and classify buckling locations. This enables product development team in faster decision making and reduces overall turnaround time. Oil canning FE model features such as stiffness, distance from constraints, etc., are extracted for training database of the ML model. Initially, 32 model features were extracted from the FE model.

This study on optimum magnification at which Retained austenite to be evaluated by comparing the difference in determining the retained austenite in low carbon carburizing alloy steel using the optical metallurgical micrographic method and X-ray diffraction method. The retained austenite phase will be in surface and color is white in nature also its presented in between the martensite needles. It can be distinguished as separate micro-constituents by using image analyzing software. In another method the RA measurements were carried out on the surface by PROTO iXRD Retained austenite measuring system using Cr K radiation. The (211) and (200) reflections of Martensite and (220) and (200) reflections of Austenite were made for this estimation. However, the calculated values of retained austenite by metallurgical microscope in different magnifications are not identical.

Customer perceived quality (CPQ) of the car is the impression of excellence that a customer experiences the brand through sight, sound, touch, and scent. Molded-in-color (MIC) bumper’s aesthetic appeal contributes significantly to the CPQ of the car. Typical parameters used to define CPQ are color, gloss, grain definition, grain depth, geometry and draft. In this work the durability of the color and gloss post ageing is understood by using analytical and characterization tools. Using the results of ageing characterization, an attempt has been made to understand the retained newness of MIC bumper.

Utility or Off-road vehicles are characterized with their higher ground clearances. Higher ground clearance of vehicle requires the vehicle to have footsteps for easy entry and exit of passengers from the vehicle. A typical foot step construction consists of structural steel brackets with an Aluminum or plastic top panel. Conventional steel construction is heavier to meet weight bearing capacity and durability requirements. Our objective of this work is to explore lightweight materials which can meet these performance requirements with a lighter construction. We chose to study the continuous glass fiber reinforced plastic as an alternative to the metal construction.

This article delineates the importance of infrastructure and its related aspects on sustainability of transportation on global and local context. Almost 7% of the GDP in India is spent on transportation and 6% of the CO2 emissions in the world is due to transportation. In countries like India, the road transport has significantly grown over other forms of mobility. This articles introduces different forms of transportations that exists today and the importance of sustainability in transportation sector. Sustainable transportation depends on development of infrastructure to enable smart transport solutions involving intelligent transport system, electric mobility, information management, vehicle health monitoring, advanced traffic management system and driver assistance system in a vehicle. The challenges includes existing transport operations, environmental impact and complexity of existing transport network.

Range anxiety is one of the major factors to be dealt with for increasing penetration of EVs in current Automotive market. The major reasons for range anxiety for customers are sparse charging infrastructure availability, limited range of Electric vehicles and range uncertainty due to diverse real-world usage conditions. The uncertainty in real world range can be reduced by increasing the correlation between the testing condition during vehicle development and real-world customer usage condition. This paper illustrates a more accurate test methodology development to derive the real-world range in electric vehicles with experimental validation and system level analysis. A test matrix is developed considering several variables influencing vehicle range like different routes, drive modes, Regeneration levels, customer drive behavior, time of drive, locations, ambient conditions etc.

Restraint systems in automotives are inevitable for the safety of passengers. Seat belts are one such restraint system in automotives that prevent drivers and passengers from being injured during a crash by restraining them back. Seatbelt on automotives has interface with Body-in-white (henceforth called as BIW) and Trim parts in-order to serve its purpose at vehicle level. One such interface part of seat belt is the web guide, which assists and ensures the nylon web’s smooth motion at different seat track positions. Web-guides on automotives ensure the flawless motion of seat belt web at pillar trim areas. In this paper, we are discussing alternate ways of assisting the seat belt web without the web-guide as a separate part. In-order to assist and ensure the motion of nylon web in its trajectory, we have extended the flange of the pillar trim involved.