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Coatings have the potential to improve bearing tribological performance. However, every coating application process and material combination may create different residual stresses and coating microstructures, and their effect on bearing fatigue and wear performance is unclear. The aim of this work is to investigate coating induced residual stress effects on bearing failure indicators using a microstructural contact mechanics (MSCM) finite element (FE) model. The MSCM FE model consists of a two-dimensional FE model of a coated bearing surface under sliding contact where individual grains are represented by FE domains. Interactions between FE domains are represented using contact element pairs. Unique to this layered rolling contact FE model is the use of polycrystalline material models to represent realistic bearing and coating microstructural behavior. The MSCM FE model was compared to a second non-microstructural contact mechanics (non-MSCM) model.

Weight reduction is very important in automotive design because of stringent demand on fuel economy. Structural optimization of dynamic systems using finite element (FE) analysis plays an important role in reducing weight while simultaneously delivering a product that meets all functional requirements for durability, crash and NVH. With advancing computer technology, the demand for solving large FE models has grown. Optimization is however costly due to repeated full-order analyses. Reanalysis methods can be used in structural vibrations to reduce the analysis cost from repeated eigenvalue analyses for both deterministic and probabilistic problems. Several reanalysis techniques have been introduced over the years including Parametric Reduced Order Modeling (PROM), Combined Approximations (CA) and the Epsilon algorithm, among others.

To improve fuel economy, there is a trend in automotive industry to use light weight, high strength materials. Automotive body structures are composed of several panels which must be downsized to reduce weight. Because this affects NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) performance, engineers are challenged to recover the lost panel stiffness from down-gaging in order to improve the structure borne noise transmitted through the lightweight panels in the frequency range of 100-300 Hz where most of the booming and low medium frequency noise occurs. The loss in performance can be recovered by optimized panel geometry using beading or damping treatment. Topography optimization is a special class of shape optimization for changing sheet metal shapes by introducing beads. A large number of design variables can be handled and the process is easy to setup in commercial codes. However, optimization methods are computationally intensive because of repeated full-order analyses.

Self-piercing riveting (SPR) has been used in production to join sheet materials since the early 1990s. A large amount of experimental trial work was required in order to determine an appropriate combination of rivet and anvil design to fulfill the required joint parameters. The presented study is describing the methodology of SPR joint design based on numerical simulation and experimental methods of defining required simulation input parameters. The required inputs are the stress-strain curves of sheet materials and rivets for the range of strains taking place in the SPR joining process, parameters required for a fracture model for all involved materials, and friction parameters for all interfaces of SPR process. In the current study, the normalized Cockroft-Latham fracture criterion was used for predicting fracture. Custom hole and tube expansion tests were used for predicting fracture of the riveted materials and the rivet, respectively.

A Reliability-Based Design Optimization (RBDO) method for multiple failure regions is presented. The method uses a Probabilistic Re-Analysis (PRRA) approach in conjunction with an approximate global metamodel with local refinements. The latter serves as an indicator to determine the failure and safe regions. PRRA calculates very efficiently the system reliability of a design by performing a single Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. Although PRRA is based on MC simulation, it calculates “smooth” sensitivity derivatives, allowing therefore, the use of a gradient-based optimizer. An “accurate-on-demand” metamodel is used in the PRRA that allows us to handle problems with multiple disjoint failure regions and potentially multiple most-probable points (MPP). The multiple failure regions are identified by using a clustering technique. A maximin “space-filling” sampling technique is used to construct the metamodel. A vibration absorber example highlights the potential of the proposed method.

Although the performance of CNC machines is accurate, unavoidable human errors at the part loading position have serious repercussions on engine performance. In the present paper the authors would like to develop an algorithm for error compensation when the tool movement is unrestricted in space. The new solution algorithm will be in terms of the known initial system variables such as the part loading errors, drill tool inclinations, location of spindle etc. This modified paper employs the same principles of inverse kinematics as done in the earlier paper wherein a faulty compound-hole angle axis in space caused by the translational and rotational errors at the part loading position is identified with an imaginary true axis in space by enforcing identity through a modified machine axes taking into effect inclination of the drill tool in space. In the absence of any specific application, this algorithm is verified on Solid Works a commercial CAD tool and found to be correct.

An approach for Probabilistic Reanalysis (PRA) of a system is presented. PRA calculates very efficiently the system reliability or the average value of an attribute of a design for many probability distributions of the input variables, by performing a single Monte Carlo simulation. In addition, PRA calculates the sensitivity derivatives of the reliability to the parameters of the probability distributions. The approach is useful for analysis problems where reliability bounds need to be calculated because the probability distribution of the input variables is uncertain or for design problems where the design variables are random. The accuracy and efficiency of PRA is demonstrated on vibration analysis of a car and on system reliability-based optimization (RBDO) of an internal combustion engine.

Scuffing is a failure mechanism which can occur in various engineering components, such as engine cylinder kits, gears and cam/followers. In this research, the scuffing behavior of 4140 steel and ductile iron was investigated and compared through ball-on-disk scuffing tests. A step load of 22.2 N every two minutes was applied with a light mineral oil as lubricant to determine the scuffing load. Both materials were heat treated to various hardness and tests were conducted to compare the scuffing behavior of the materials when the tempered hardness of each material was the same. Ductile iron was found to have a consistently high scuffing resistance before tempering and at tempering temperatures lower than 427°C (HRC ≻45). Above 427°C the scuffing resistance decreases. 4140 steel was found to have low scuffing resistance at low tempering temperatures, but as the tempering temperature increases, the scuffing resistance increased.

In this paper, the development of random vibration testing schedules for durability design verification of engine mounted products is presented, based on the equivalent fatigue damage concept and the 95th-percentile customer engine usage data for 150,000 miles. Development of the 95th-percentile customer usage profile is first discussed. Following that, the field engine excitation and engine duty cycle definition is introduced. By using a simplified transfer function of a single degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system subjected to a base excitation, the response acceleration and stress PSDs are related to the input excitation in PSD, which is the equivalent fatigue damage concept. Also, the narrow-band fatigue damage spectrum (FDS) is calculated in terms of the input excitation PSD based on the Miner linear damage rule, the Rayleigh statistical distribution for stress amplitude, a material's S-N curve, and the Miles approximate solution.

One of the major problems that the automotive industry faces is reducing friction to increase efficiency. Researchers have shown that 30% of the fuel energy was consumed to overcome the friction forces between the moving parts of any automobile, Holmberg et al. [1]. The interface of the piston pin and pin bore is one of the areas that generate high friction under severe working conditions of high temperature and lack of lubrication. In this research, experimental investigation and theoretical simulation have been carried out to analyze the motion of the floating pin against pin bore. In the experimental study, the focus was on analyzing the floating pin motion by using a bench test rig to simulate the floating pin motion in an internal combustion engine. A motion data acquisition system was developed to capture and record the pin motion. Thousands of images were recorded and later analyzed by a code written by MATLAB.

Part II of the paper focuses on fatigue tests of four specific gear steels: SAE 4320, SAE 8822, PS18, and 20MnCr5. Fatigue life, S-N curves are experimentally generated for all steels at low cycle fatigue and high cycle fatigue. The failure stresses at cycle one and slope of the linear portion of S-N curves are determined based on the experimental data. Endurance limits were tested. Uncertainty in the fatigue data is analyzed in details and values of sigma are calculated. Design curves were estimated based on the fatigue test results.

In practice, the piston wrist pin is either fixed to the connecting rod or floats between the connecting rod and the piston. The tribological behavior of fixed wrist pins have been studied by several researchers, however there have been few studies done on the floating wrist pin. A new bench rig has been designed and constructed to investigate the tribological behavior between floating pins and pin bore bearings. The experiments were run using both fixed pins and floating pins under the same working conditions. It was found that for fixed pins there was severe damage on the pin bore in a very short time (5 minutes) and material transfer occurs between the wrist pin and pin bore; however, for the floating pin, even after a long testing time (60 minutes) there was minimal surface damage on either the pin bore or wrist pin.

This particular study focuses on four specific gear steels: SAE 4320, SAE 8822, PS18, and 20MnCr5. Notched specimens are manufactured from the four materials. Three point bending experiments were conducted which include ultimate tests and fatigue tests. Part I is on ultimate test only. Part II will concentrate on fatigue testing. In order to see how the carburization affected the fatigue performance of these steels, a residual stress test was performed on one sample of each steel by mean of the incremental hole drilling method. The compressive stresses were found in all four steels with minimum and maximum stress approximately equal. This suggests that the residual stresses are biaxial in the carburized steel case. The difference between the maximum and minimum stresses is within 37% for all steels. The residual stress after the carburization process were found to be highest in the 4320 steel and SAE 8822, followed by PS 18 and then MnCr.

This paper describes a laboratory-based test system and procedure for determining the durability of RTV sealant with fretting movement. A test machine is described in which shear and tensile stress-generating displacements at room temperature and temperature of 100°C are produced to load an RTV seal. The test system utilizes an air pressurized hollow cylinder with a cap sealed by RTV sealant on a reciprocating test rig. An external air leakage monitoring system detects the health of the tested RTV seal. When air leakage occurs, the seal is determined to have failed. RTV sealant used in the test was fully cured at room temperature and then aged with engine oil. In the experiments, a total of 6 displacements were used to generate cycle/amplitude graphs for both shear and tensile modes. Failures were determined to be caused by the loss of adhesion in tensile mode, and by crack nucleation due to the special step design in shear mode.

One-dimensional (1D) engine simulation packages are limited in modeling flows through an adverse pressure gradient where boundary layer separation is more likely to occur, as in the case of the diffuser part of the restrictor. The restrictor modeling difficulty usually manifests itself as an engine model that consumes a lot of effort (both computational and from the user) in the modeling of the restrictor. The approach sought in this work was to provide a flow vs pressure drop dependency to the code such that it does not consume too much effort in the analysis of the restrictor. This approach is similar to that used for the valve flow, where a look up table is typically provided for determining the flow. Experimentally determined flow measurements on a thin-plate orifice, a short restrictor and a long restrictor are presented and discussed. The developed model gave excellent results in an acyclic steady-state simulation and is being integrated in the full engine model.

Low vibration and noise level in internal combustion engines has become an essential part of the design process. It is well known that the piston assembly can be a major source of engine mechanical friction and cold start noise, if not designed properly. The piston secondary motion and piston-bore contact pattern are critical in piston design because they affect the skirt-to-bore impact force and therefore, how the piston impact excitation energy is damped, transmitted and eventually radiated from the engine structure as noise. An analytical method is presented in this paper for simulating piston secondary dynamics and piston-bore contact for an asymmetric half piston model. The method includes several important physical attributes such as bore distortion effects due to mechanical and thermal deformation, inertia loading, piston barrelity and ovality, piston flexibility and skirt-to-bore clearance. The method accounts for piston kinematics, rigid-body dynamics and flexibility.

An analytical method is presented in this paper for simulating piston secondary dynamics and piston-bore contact for an asymmetric half piston model including elastohydrodynamic (EHD) lubrication at the bore-skirt interface. A piston EHD analysis is used based on a finite-difference formulation. The oil film is discretized using a two-dimensional mesh. For improved computational efficiency without loss of accuracy, the Reynolds’ equation is solved using a perturbation approach which utilizes an “influence zone” concept, and a successive over-relaxation solver. The analysis includes several important physical attributes such as bore distortion effects due to mechanical and thermal deformation, inertia loading and piston barrelity and ovality. A Newmark-Beta time integration scheme combined with a Newton-Raphson linearization, calculates the piston secondary motion.

The advantages of having higher stiffness to weight ratio and strength to weigh ratio that composite materials have resulted in an increased interest in them. In automotive engineering, the weight savings has positive impacts on other attributes like fuel economy and possible noise, vibration and harshness (NVH). The driveline of an automotive system can be a target for possible use of composite materials. The design of the driveshaft of an automotive system is primarily driven by its natural frequency. This paper presents an exact solution for the vibration of a composite driveshaft with intermediate joints. The joint is modeled as a frictionless internal hinge. The Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is used. Lumped masses are placed on each side of the joint to represent the joint mass. Equations of motion are developed using the appropriate boundary conditions and then solved exactly.

In a CAS system, the distance and relative velocity between front and host vehicles are estimated to calculate time-to-collision (TTC). The distance estimates by different methods will certainly include noise which should be removed to ensure the accuracy of TTC calculations. Kalman filter is a good tool to filter such type of noise. Nevertheless, Kalman filter is a model based filter, which means a correct model is important to get the good filtering results. Usually, a vehicle is either moving with a constant velocity (CV) or constant acceleration (CA) maneuvers. This means the distance data between front and host vehicles can be described by either constant velocity or constant acceleration model. In this paper, first, CV and CA models are used to design two Kalman filters and an interacting multiple model (IMM) is used to dynamically combine the outputs from two filters.

Automotive parking gears were tempered using three different tempering processes with a motive of determining the best tempering processes in terms of the properties of the heat treated samples. The three tempering processes compared in this study are Induction temper, Furnace temper and Magnetic core-flux temper. Torsion tests, Residual Stress tests and metallurgical analysis were done on the samples that were induction heat-treated and then tempered using one of the above mentioned three tempering processes. The resultant test data was used to draw conclusions on the performance of the tempering processes.