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Brake steer is an undesirable phenomenon where a vehicle deviates to one side of the road during braking. Vehicle deviation i.e. drift causes driver discomfort, where a driver has to constantly apply Steering Wheel corrections while braking in order to safely maintain the desired path. In a particular model of commercial vehicle segment, an issue of unacceptable right-side vehicle drift during braking was observed which was making the drive of the vehicle unsafe for the driver. Aim of this paper is to analyse the probable causes of such a vehicle drift, to objectively measure actual vehicle drift during braking using a unique methodology. In this paper, the root cause of the brake steer is discussed and an improvement on the vehicle is proposed by changing kinematic hard points of suspension and steering linkage to reduce the brake steer to the limit that vehicle drift is almost eliminated, and vehicle becomes completely safe for the driver to drive.

Door slam test is one of the important durability tests in door design and development. Door requires to meet certain performance requirements like it should close properly (no metal to metal contact), there should not be any leakage, and closing operation should be smooth & with minimal effort and it should survive the life of the vehicle. Virtual simulation of door slam test, correlation with physical test results and effect of various parameters like seals stiffness are demonstrated in this study. Slam Analysis was carried out in LS-Dyna solver before physical test. This not only helped in avoiding initial structural design flaws, but also helped us in deciding door latch position, effect of mass distribution in the door and study of force distribution between primary seal, secondary seal and door latch. Primary and secondary seals played a critical role in the analysis. An intended length of both the seals was tested first to get its stiffness curve.