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This study presents a practical theoretical method to judge the aerodynamic response of buses in the early design stage based on both aerodynamic and design parameters. A constant longitudinal velocity 2-DOF vehicle lateral dynamics model is used to investigate the lateral response of a bus under nine different wind gusts excitations. An appropriate 3-D CFD simulation model of the bus shape results is integrated with carefully chosen design parameters data of a real bus chassis and body to obtain vehicle lateral dynamic response to the prescribed excitations. Vehicle model validity is carried out then, the 2-DOF vehicle lateral dynamics model has been executed in MATLAB Simulink environment with the selected data. Simulation represents the vehicle in a straight ahead path then entered a gusting wind section of the track with a fixed steering wheel. Vehicle response includes lateral deviation (LD), lateral acceleration (LA), yaw angle (YA) and yaw rate (YR).

Gear fault diagnosis is important in the vibration monitoring of any rotating machine. When a localized fault occurs in gears, the vibration signals always display non-stationary behavior. In early stage of gear failure, the gear mesh frequency (GMF) contains very little energy and is often overwhelmed by noise and higher-level macro-structural vibrations. An effective signal processing method would be necessary to remove such corrupting noise and interference. This paper presents the value of optimal wavelet function for early detection of faulty gear. The Envelope Detection (ED) and the Energy Operator are used for gear fault diagnosis as common techniques with and without the proposed optimal wavelet to verify the effectiveness of the optimal wavelet function. Kurtosis values are determined for the previous techniques as an indicator parameter for the ability of early gear fault detection. The comparative study is applied to real vibration signals.

The minimum support stiffness that achieves the maximum modal frequencies or critical speed is very important in the design of mechanical systems. The optimal values of the intermediate support stiffness and geometrical parameters of uniform and stepped Timoshenko beams composed of single or two materials are studied in order to maximize the modal frequency and minimize the intermediate support stiffness. Dynamic stiffness matrix (DSM) method and multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm are used together to evaluate new optimal parameters. For single material, the results show that for uniform thick beams, the optimal maximum fundamental frequency and minimum intermediate support stiffness are lower than those of Bernoulli-Euler beams. In addition, the optimal design for stepped beams made of two metallic materials is investigated. For three different metallic combinations, gain factors of 1.561 to 2.745 are obtained for a beam without intermediate support.

Vehicle Handling performance depends on many parameters. One of the most important parameters is the dynamic behavior of the steering system. However, steering system had been enhanced thoroughly over the past decade where Active Front Steering (AFS) is now present and other system as Active Independent Front Steering (AIFS) is currently in the research phase. Actually, AFS system adopt the front wheels’ angles base on the actual input steering angle from the driver according to vehicle handling dynamics performance. While, the AIFS controls the angle of each front wheel individually to avoid reaching the saturation limits of any of the front wheels’ adhesion. In this paper modeling and analysis of an AIFS is presented with Tire Work Load (TWL) based controller. Magic Formula tire model is implemented to represent the tire in lateral slip condition.

In this paper, a nonlinear semi-active vehicle suspension system using MR fluid dampers is investigated to enhance ride comfort and vehicle stability. Fuzzy logic and fuzzy self-tuning PID control techniques are applied as system controllers to compute desired front and rear damping forces in conjunction with a Signum function method damper controller to assess force track-ability of system controllers. The suggested fuzzy self-tuning PID operates fuzzy system as a PID gains tuner to mitigate the vehicle vibration levels and achieve excellent performance related to ride comfort and vehicle stability. The equations of motion of four-degrees-of-freedom semi-active half-vehicle suspension system incorporating MR dampers are derived and simulated using Matlab/Simulink software.

Nonparametric models do not require any assumptions on the underlying input/output relationship of the system being modeled so that they are highly useful for studying and modeling the nonlinear behaviour of Magnetorheological (MR) fluid dampers. However, the application of these models in semi-active suspension is very rare and most theoretical works available on this topic address the application of parametric models (e.g. Modified Bouc-Wen model). In this paper, a nonparametric MR damper model based on the Restoring Force Surface technique is applied in vehicle semi-active suspension system. It consists of a three dimensional interpolation using Chebyshev orthogonal polynomial functions to simulate the MR damper force as a function of the displacement, velocity and input voltage. Also, a damper controller based on a Signum function method is proposed, for the first time, for use in conjunction with the system controller of a semi-active vehicle suspension.

The dynamics of vehicles became one of the most important aspects for current developments of electronically controlled steering, suspension and traction/braking systems. However, most of the published research on vehicle maneuverability doesn't take into account the effect of the dynamic tire load and its variation on uneven roads. Clearly, it was stated that using a suitable active suspension system could reduce this dynamic tire load. This dynamic tire load is playing a vital role as it is the major link between the vertical and lateral forces exerted on the road, which affects the lateral dynamics of the vehicle. In this paper, a practical hydro-pneumatic limited bandwidth active suspension system with and without wheelbase preview control is used to study its influence on the vehicle stability in lateral direction. The model is a longitudinal half car with four degrees of freedom.

The transformation of rapeseed oil into methyl ester through the transestrification process normally produce biodiesel fuel with kinematic viscosity almost double that of the commercial diesel fuel. The bulk modulus of biodiesel is also higher than that for the conventional diesel fuel. In this paper, the effects of the two physical properties on the injection characteristics of Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME) are discussed. The injection characteristics considered here were namely; nozzle chamber pressure, needle lift, and fuel injection rate. The mutual effects of engine speed and delivery pipe length were also analyzed. A previously developed computer model was used to simulate the injection process of the conventional pump-line-nozzle injection system. An explicit finite difference scheme was adopted to solve the unsteady flow equation within the delivery pipe.

In the design of recreational vehicle alternators, a particular challenge arises from marketing and engineering teams' desire to ensure that their products meet “best in class” sound quality characteristics. Furthermore, it is desirable to know these characteristics in measurable engineering terms in the product design stage, preferably before prototypes are built and tested. However, the aim of this paper is to investigate experimentally the electromagnetic sound quality characteristics of a vehicle alternator with the view of determination. For this reason, a special test rig was designed to simulate the alternator electromagnetic noise source. The results indicate that significant information can be obtained for this source. This can be an effective way to control this generated noise and consequently improve the vehicle alternator sound quality and look promising.

The number of speed humps (sleeping policemen) has seen a global increase in the last decade. This paper addresses the geometric requirements of these humps using Genetic Algorithms optimization techniques to control the speed, stability, and ride feel of the traversing vehicles. The interaction between road hump profile and the modeled vehicles (passenger and a two-axle truck) are studied with a dynamic model. The shape of the proposed profile is described by numbers of amplitudes of harmonic functions. The extreme acceleration of the drivers’ seats of the vehicles traversing the hump is set as multiobjective function for the optimization process, taking into consideration the road-holding ability represented by the tire lift-off speed. The results show that hump geometry can be improved while fulfilling the requirements of speed control and vehicle dynamic responses.

Dynamic modeling of the gear vibration is a useful tool to study the vibration response of a geared system under various gear parameters and operating conditions. An improved understanding of vibration signal is required for early detection of incipient gear failure to achieve high reliability. However, the aim of this work is to make use of a 6-degree-of-freedom gear dynamic model including localized tooth defect for early detection of gear failure. The model consists of a gear pair, two shafts, two inertias representing load and prime mover and bearings. The model incorporates the effects of time-varying mesh stiffness and damping, backlash, excitation due to gear errors and modifications. The results indicate that the simulated signal shows that as the defect size increases the amplitude of the acceleration signal increases. The crest factor and kurtosis values of the simulated signal increase as the fault increases.

The DC power supply is ingredient part in the automotive industries as it has been used as a DC power supplies for a wide range of loads. Meanwhile, it is mandatory for battery charging. These types however, causes many problems such as poor power factor, high input current harmonics distortion and uncontrolled DC voltage. In this paper, an improved input power factor correction that uses a combined control system consists of two nested loops with a feedback of the DC voltage and input current as long as a feed forward from the output power. The system has been analyzed, modeled, simulated and experimentally verified. The novel feature of the proposed control scheme resides in fact that it is not only achieve nearly unity power factor with minimum input current total harmonics distortion only but it also introduce superior performance in DC voltage transient conditions.

Squeal from brakes is a problem in the automotive industry and large efforts are made to understand the squeal tendencies. The approach taken is mainly to change the design of the caliper, fine-tune the brake pad material and finally to trim the introducing shims on the backside of the pads. Despite these efforts still no general solutions exist. To advance the situation, a deeper understanding of the actual source of excitation of the sound in the friction interface is needed. However, in the present investigation the surfaces modifications of brake disc and pad have been tested with respect to the understanding properties. The surfaces modifications are slotted pad material and coated disc. All tests have been made in a brake test stand consisting of a complete front wheel corner of a vehicle. The changes have resulted in a significant understand of the generated noise.

This paper is concerned with the analysis of the performance of actively suspended vehicles when the effects of the aerodynamics are considered. The investigation is wholly theoretical and treats a half vehicle model, active suspension, through simulation of running at different speeds on a random-profile road. Using classical control laws, which do not account for aerodynamic effects, it is shown that starting from a vehicle speed of 35 m/s, ride comfort and road holding parameters significantly deteriorate. A method is introduced to modify the control strategy so that these effects can be taken into consideration. Various forms of control laws are presented, and conclusions are drawn to specify the benefits that could be achieved from this modified control strategy.

A full vehicle of a preview control semi-active suspension system based on an interval type-2 fuzzy controller design using a magnetorheological (MR) damper to improve ride comfort is investigated in this paper. It is integrated with the force distribution system to obtain the optimal rate of road adhesion during braking and handling. The nonlinear suspension model is derived by considering vertical, pitch, and roll motions. The preview interval type-2 fuzzy technique is designed as a system controller, and it is attached with a Signum function method as a damper controller to turn on the voltage for the MR damper. This voltage is adjusted for each wheel based on the external excitation generated by road roughness in order to enhance ride comfort. To describe the effectiveness and adaptable responses of the preview controlled semi-active system, the performance is compared with both the passive and MR passive suspension systems during time and frequency domains.

The previous research work on Active Independent Front Steering (AIFS) system concluded an enhanced vehicle response and tire adhesion utilization. Some research emphasizes the importance of Tire Work load (TWL) in the generation of maximum possible tire forces that ensures vehicle controllability and stability. In this study, a mathematical model is constructed to investigate the effect of TWL as a parameter on AIFS performance. Toward such a target, a new Fuzzy control strategy is developed based on TWL and vehicle yaw rate as control inputs for the AIFS controller. Unfortunately, the TWL is not a measurable parameter or even easy to be estimated. Consequently, another control strategy was implemented based on slip angle and vehicle yaw rate as inputs for the AIFS controller.

Vehicle suspension is considered a vital system of modern automotive and necessary to offer an adequate level of ride comfort and roadholding. In the present paper, a fuzzy-based sliding surface (FBSS) controller is designed, as a system controller for the first time, for a semi-active vehicle suspension using a magnetorheological (MR) damper in order to minimize the transmitted unwanted vibrations to the passengers. Therefore, an ideal reference skyhook model is employed to construct the sliding surface, which is the input of fuzzy logic. MR damper is a semi-active device and is controlled indirectly using an external voltage source. So a neural-based damper controller is used to compute the applied voltage to the magnet coil of the MR damper in series with the FBSS system controller. The proposed semi-active controlled quarter-vehicle suspension using an MR damper is solved numerically by Matlab.

A hybrid search optimization is presented in order to optimize hybrid laminated fibrous composite E-springs for vehicle suspension systems. This optimization is conducted with both of the geometrical configuration and laminate structure of the E-spring. A genetic algorithm along with a hill-climbing random-walk approach are used through a developed NURBS-based technique in order to conduct this optimization. A mathematical-modeling-based mid-ware technology is introduced in order to fully automate the optimization process through linking the run engines of mathematical modeling and finite element analysis from within the mathematical modeling engine. A hybrid approach of the inter-laminar shear stress and Tsai-Wu criteria is first implemented in order to identify failure indices of the resulting optimum shape and laminate structure.

The work presented here is to develop a monitoring life mathematical model to manage periodically the operations job orders of vehicle service station. This period is occasionally an hour, a day or a longer period than that, and is normally determined by the service manager. Model parameters are changeable over these periods due to dynamic movable situation of a vehicle markets. The objective function is to maximize the total income from vehicles service operations at all considered conventional model or with self expert prognostic system by taken into account least stop of vehicles, while keeping in mind the satisfying the customer demands and the service quality. The decision variables indicate the number of various technical operations to be performed for different types of vehicles.

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) technique has been developed and applied by numerous researchers as a very useful predictor for nonlinear systems. In this paper, non-parametric models have been investigated to predict the direct and inverse nonlinear dynamic behavior of magnetorheological (MR) fluid dampers using ANFIS technique to demonstrate more accurate and efficient models. The direct ANFIS model can be used to predict the damping force of the MR fluid damper and the inverse dynamic ANFIS model can be used to offer a suitable command voltage applied to the damper coil. The architectures and the learning details of the direct and inverse ANFIS models for MR fluid dampers are introduced and simulation results are discussed. The suggested ANFIS models are used to predict the damping force of the MR fluid damper accurately and precisely. Moreover, validation results for the ANFIS models are proposed and used to evaluate their performance.