Search Results

The main purpose of this research is to investigate the optimal design of pipeline diameter in an air brake system in order to reduce the response time for driving safety using DOE (Design of Experiment) method. To achieve this purpose, this paper presents the development and validation of a computer-aided analytical dynamic model of a pneumatic brake system in commercial vehicles. The brake system includes the subsystems for brake pedal, treadle valve, quick release valve, load sensing proportional valve and brake chamber, and the simulation models for individual components of the brake system are established within the multi-domain physical modeling software- AMESim based on the logic structure. An experimental test bench was set up by connecting each component with the nylon pipelines based on the actual layout of the 4×2 commercial vehicle air brake system.

NVH quality is one of the most important criteria by which people judge the design of a vehicle. The Powertrain Mounting System (PMS), which can reduce the vibration from engine to vehicle cab as well as the inside noise, has attained significant attention. Much research has been done on the isolation method for three- and four-point mounting. But the six-point mounting system, which is usually equipped in commercial vehicle, is seldom studied and should be paid more attention. In this paper, the support rod installed on the upside of the transmission case is considered as a flexible body. Thus a rigid-flexible coupling model of PMS is established and the necessity of the established model is analyzed by comparing the simulation results of the new model and those of the conventional model.

The ride comfort of the commercial vehicle is mainly affected by several vibration isolation systems such as the primary suspension system, engine mounting system and the cab mounting system. A rigid-flexible coupling model for the truck was built and analyzed in multi-body environment (ADAMS). The method applying the excitation on the wheels center and the engine mountings in time domain was presented. The variables' effects on the ride performance were studied by design of experiment (DOE). The optimal design was obtained by the co-simulation of the ADAMS/View, iSIGHT and Matlab. It was found that the vertical root mean square (RMS) acceleration and frequency-weighted RMS acceleration on the seat track were reduced about 17% and 11% respectively at different speeds relative to baseline according to ISO 2631-1.

The suspension system of a heavy truck's driver seat plays an important role to reduce the vibrations transmitted to the seat occupant from the cab floor. Air-spring is widely used in the seat suspension system, for the reason that its spring rate is variable and it can make the seat suspension system keep constant ‘tuned’ frequency compared to the conventional coil spring. In this paper, vibration differential equation of air-spring system with auxiliary volume is derived, according to the theory of thermodynamic, hydrodynamics. The deformation-load static characteristic curves of air-spring is obtained, by using a numerical solution method. Then, the ADAMS model of the heavy truck's driver seat suspension system is built up, based on the structure of the seat and parameters of the air-spring and the shock-absorber. At last, the model is validated by comparing the simulation results and the test results, considering the seat acceleration PSD and RMS value.

Taguchi method is a technology to prevent quality problems at early stages of product development and product design. Parameter design method is an important part in Taguchi method which selects the best control factor level combination for the optimization of the robustness of product function against noise factors. The air induction system (AIS) provides clean air to the engine for combustion. The noise radiated from the inlet of the AIS can be of significant importance in reducing vehicle interior noise and tuning the interior sound quality. The porous duct has been introduced into the AIS to reduce the snorkel noise. It helps with both the system layout and isolation by reducing transmitted vibration. A CAE simulation procedure has been developed and validated to predict the snorkel noise of the porous ducted AIS. In this paper, Taguchi's parameter design method was utilized to optimize a porous duct design in an AIS to achieve the best snorkel noise performance.

In this paper, a new computational method is provided to identify the uncertain parameters of Load Sensing Proportional Valve (LSPV) in a heavy truck brake system by using the polynomial chaos theory. The simulation model of LSPV is built in the software AMESim depending on structure of the valve, and the estimation process is implemented relying on the experimental measurements by pneumatic bench test. With the polynomial chaos expansion carried out by collocation method, the output observation function of the nonlinear pneumatic model can be transformed into a linear and time-invariant form, and the general recursive functions based on Newton method can therefore be reformulated to fit for the computer programming and calculation. To improve the estimation accuracy, the Newton method is modified with reference to Simulated Annealing algorithm by introducing the Metropolis Principle to control the fluctuation during the estimation process and escape from the local minima.

The optimization of vehicle suspension kinematic/compliance characteristics is of significant importance in the chassis development. Practical suspension system contains many uncertainties which may result from poorly known or variable parameters or from uncertain inputs. However, in most suspension optimization processes these uncertainties are not accounted for. This study explores the use of Chebyshev polynomials to model complex nonlinear suspension systems with interval uncertainties. In the suspension model, several kinematic and compliance characteristics are considered as objectives to be optimized. Suspension bushing characteristics are considered as design variables as well as uncertain parameters. A high-order response surface model using the zeros of Chebyshev polynomials as sampling points is established to approximate the suspension kinematic/compliance model.

Nowadays, studying the human body response in a seated position has attracted a lot of attention as environmental vibrations are transferred to the human body through floor and seat. This research has constructed a multi-body biodynamic human model with 17 degrees of freedom (DOF), including the backrest support and the interaction between feet and ground. Three types of human biodynamic models are taken into consideration: the first model doesn't include the interaction between the feet and floor, the second considers the feet and floor interaction by using a high stiffness spring, the third one includes the interaction by using a soft spring. Based on the whole vehicle model, the excitation to human body through feet and back can be obtained by ride simulation. The simulation results indicate that the interaction between feet and ground exerts non-negligible effect upon the performance of the whole body vibration by comparing the three cases.

A turbocharger is currently widely used to boost performance of an internal combustion engine. Generally, a turbocharger consists of a compressor which typically is driven by an exhaust turbine. The compressor will influence how the low frequency engine pulsation propagates in the intake system. The compressor will also produce broad-band flow induced sound due to the turbulence flow and high frequency narrowband tonal sound which is associated with rotating blade pressures. In this paper, a practical simulation procedure based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is developed to predict the flow induced sound of a turbocharger compressor. In the CFD model of turbocharger compressor, the unsteady, moving wheel, detached eddy simulation (DES) approach are utilized. In this manner, both the broad-band and narrow-band flow induced sound are directly resolved in the CFD computation.

There are many noise sources from the vehicle fuel system to generate noise inside a vehicle. Among them, the pressure pulsation due to the rapid opening and closing of gasoline engine injectors can cause undesirable fuel pulse noise. As the pressure pulsation propagates in the fuel supply line toward to rear end of the vehicle, the pressure energy is transferred from fuel lines to the vehicle underbody through clips and into the passenger compartment. It is crucial to attenuate the pressure pulsation inside the fuel line to reduce the fuel pulse noise. In this paper, a case study on developing an effective countermeasure to reduce the objectionable fuel pulse noise of a V8 gasoline injection system at engine idle condition is presented. First, the interior noise of a prototype vehicle was tested and the objectionable fuel pulse noise is exhibited. The problem frequency ranges of the pulse noise were identified.

Engine air induction shell noise is a structure borne noise that radiates from the surface of the air induction system. The noise is driven by pulsating engine induction air and is perceived as annoying by vehicle passengers. The problem is aggravated by the vehicle design demands for low weight components packaged in an increasingly tight under hood environment. Shell noise problems are often not discovered until production intent parts are available and tested on the vehicle. Part changes are often necessary which threatens program timing. Shell noise should be analyzed in the air induction system design phase and a good shell noise analytical process and targets must be defined. Several air induction clean side ducts are selected for this study. The ducts shell noise is assessed in terms of material strength and structural stiffness. A measurement process is developed to evaluate shell noise of the air induction components. Noise levels are measured inside of the clean side ducts.

In this paper, a multi-mode active seat suspension with a single actuator is proposed and built. A one-DOF seat suspension system is modelled based on a quarter car model of commercial vehicle with an actuator which is comprised of a DC motor and a gear reducer. Aiming at improving ride comfort and reducing energy consumption, a multi-mode controller is established. According to the seat vertical acceleration and suspension dynamic travel signals, control strategies switch between three modes: active drive mode, energy harvesting mode and plug breaking mode.

A robust design procedure is applied to achieve improved vehicle handling performance as an integral part of simulation-based vehicle design. This paper presents a hybrid robust design method, the robust design process strategy (RDPS), which makes full use of the intense complementary action of characteristics between the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and the Taguchi method, to get the robust design of the vehicle handling performance. The vehicle multi-body dynamic model is built in the platform that is constructed by the software of iSIGHT, ADAMS/CAR, and MATLAB. The design-of-experiment method of the Latin Hypercube (LHC) is used to obtain the approximate area values, and then the RDPS is utilized to achieve improved vehicle handling performance results. The validation is made by the Monte Carlo Simulation Technique (MCST) in terms of the effectiveness of the RDPS in solving robust design problems.

Tyre behavior plays an important role in vehicle dynamics simulation. The Magic Formula Tyre Model is a semi-empirical tyre model which describes tyre behavior quite accurately in the handling simulation. The Magic Formula Tyre Model needs a set of parameters to describe the tyre properties; the determination of these parameters is nontrivial task due to its nonlinear nature and the presence of a large number of coefficients. In this paper, the homotopy algorithm is applied to the parameter identification of Magic Formula tyre model. A morphing parameter is introduced to correct the optimization process; as a result, the solution is directed converging to the global optimal solution, avoiding the local convergence. The method uses different continuation methods to globally optimize the parameters, which ensures that the prediction of the Magic Formula model can be very close to the test data at all stages of the optimization process.

The design of suspension affects the vehicle dynamics such as ride comfort and handling stability. Nonlinear characteristics and friction are important characteristics of suspension system, and the influence on vehicle dynamic performance cannot be ignored. Based on the seven-degree-of-freedom vehicle vibration nonlinear model with friction, the vibration response process of the vehicle and the influence of suspension friction on vehicle ride comfort and suspension action process were studied. The results show that friction will significantly affects the simulation of ride comfort and coincide with the function of the shock absorber. The suspension shock absorbers of vehicles were optimized with and without suspension friction. The results showed that the suspension tended to choose softer shock absorbers when there was friction. However, both of the two optimizations are able to improve the ride comfort of vehicles, and the simulation results were similar.

Elastomeric bushings are widely used in the passenger cars to make the cars have an ideal vehicle Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) performance. However, elastomeric bushings also influence on the vehicle handling, ride and the durability performance of each component in the vehicle suspension system. It is relatively easy and cost effective to change the compliance of the bushing components compared with other method because they are made of elastomeric materials. The design of an elastomeric bushing is really a big challenge. One of the main difficulties comes from the different target compliance is wanted according to the handling, ride and durability demand at each different orientation (indicated by X Y Z) of the bushing. In this paper the following procedure was used for optimization of suspension elastomeric bushing compliance. Firstly, a detailed multi-body model was built including the nonlinear bushing effects and lower control arm flexibility.

This paper investigates a hierarchical optimization procedure for the optimum synthesis of a double-axle steering mechanism by considering the dynamic load of a vehicle which is seldom discussed in the previous literature. Firstly, a multi-body model of double-axle steering is presented by characterizing the detailed leaf spring effect. Accordingly, the influences of dynamic load including the motion interference of steering linkage resulted from the elastic deformation of leaf spring, and the effects of wheel slip angle and the position discrepancy of wheel speed rotation centers are explored systematically. And then, a hierarchical optimization method based on target cascading methodology is proposed to classify the design variables of double-axle steering mechanism into four levels. At last, a double-axle steering mechanism of a heavy-duty truck is utilized to demonstrate the validity of this method.

Active steering systems can help the driver to master critical driving situations. This paper presents a fuzzy logic control strategy on active steering vehicle based on a multi-body vehicle dynamic model. The multi-body vehicle dynamic model using ADAMS can accurately predict the dynamic performance of the vehicle. A new hybrid steering scheme including both active front steering (applying an additional front steering angle besides the driver input) and rear steering is presented to control both yaw velocity and sideslip angle. A set of fuzzy logic rules is designed for the active steering controller, and the fuzzy controller can adjust both sideslip angle and yaw velocity through the co-simulation between ADAMS and the Matlab fuzzy control unit with the optimized membership function. To ensure the design of high-quality fuzzy control rules, a rule optimization strategy is introduced.

A Special Analytical Target Cascading (SATC) process is developed for design problem which is difficult to ascertain the targets cascaded from upper level to lower level. The methodology is applied to achieve improving Handling Performance and Ride Quality (HPRQ) of a passenger car. A bi-level hierarchical structure with target-transforming process is established based on conceptual suspension model and multi-body models. DOE, RSM and a combined optimization method of simulated annealing and Programming Quadratic Line search is applied to execute the optimization process. The result shows that HPRQ is improved through special ATC based on CSM and multi-body modeling technique.

To design and optimize the vehicle driveline is necessary to decrease the fuel consumption and improve dynamic performance. This paper describes a methodology to optimize the driveline design including the axle ratio, transmission shift points and transmission shift ratios considering uncertainty. A new and flexible tool for modeling multi-domain systems, Modelica, is used to carry out the modeling and analysis of a vehicle, and the multi-domain model is developed to determine the optimum design in terms of fuel economy, with determinability. Secondly, a robust optimization is carried out to find the optimum design considering uncertainty. The results indicate that the fuel economy and dynamic performance are improved greatly.