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Individuals in the United States consume twice as much energy as those in any other region. Solitary workday commutes in light vehicles are the leading reason for this difference. An electric vehicle design is proposed to help catalyze more social, higher occupancy, commuting habits - through application of existing technology. Performance criteria are: 1) attract passengers to the suburban front yard at 6:30 AM, 2) match market leading crash test performance, cargo capability, and sense of freedom, and 3) deliver easier parking, better acoustics and better passenger mile efficiency. A vehicle as a rolling event venue determines a large windscreen, side-by-side upright seating arrangements, and acoustic excellence -an experience where there are only good seats. These requirements force a decision to close the wake along a vertical line to form a narrow wake. The chassis is platform batteries with dual motor electric rear drive and undetermined front drive.

Optimization of a structure which is subjected to simultaneous multiple load cases starts with the investigation of worst possible load case combination. This is called conventional optimization approach, which can be considered impractical due to the excessive CPU times in the application of multiple load cases. This computational difficulty can be overcome by deploying singular value decomposition (SVD) to find the worst possible load case against which the structure should be optimized. To this end, the SVD based optimization approach to optimization of a structure subject to simultaneous multiple load cases is presented. Conventional Multiobjective optimization and SVD based Multi-objective optimization approaches are applied to a sample Commercial Truck Chassis Frame structure for durability vs. weight objectives. This will enable designer to select the optimum design parameters out of the calculated Pareto sets.

The main source for the estimation of stiffness coefficients to be used in accident reconstruction calculations is a very large database of crash-test related information from NHTSA. However, that database includes only car models sold in the USA. Unfortunately, there is no such information for European-only cars besides the raw video recordings of EuroNCAP crash tests. In the present work a methodology is proposed to estimate the stiffness coefficients of European-only models from video images of EuroNCAP crash tests. However, these images are intricate to assess, because the car front is crushed into a deformable barrier at 40% of the front width and usually the bonnet (hood) hides most of the crash damage. Therefore, the top images could not be used straightforward, so a procedure was envisaged to circumvent this difficulty and still allow to calculate stiffness coefficients for European-only cars.

A low frequency vibration issue around 3.2 Hz occurs during a commercial heavy truck program development process, and it is linked to extremely uncomfortable driving and riding experiences. This work focuses on an analytical effort to resolve the issue by first building a full vehicle MBS (multi-body-system) model, and then carrying out vibration response analyses. The model validation is performed by using full vehicle testing in terms of structural modes and frequency response characteristics. In order to resolve the issue which is excited by tire non-uniformity, the influence of the cab suspension, frame modes, front leaf spring system and rear tandem suspension is analyzed. The root cause of the issue is found to be the poor isolation of the rear tandem suspension system. The analytical optimization effort establishes the resolution measure for the issue.

The stiffness of the frame has a great influence on the ride comfort of the heavy truck. Reducing frame thickness was proved to be unacceptable in terms of ride comfort, which is verified by the testing results. The truck frame was reinforced in order to improve the ride comfort. The modal analysis showed that the pitch frequency of the vehicle has increased 0.5 Hz and the frequency response has decreased by 20%. In order to research the influence of frame stiffness on the heavy truck ride comfort, a detailed model including a flex frame, chassis suspension, cab suspension, driveline, etc., was built by MSC.ADAMS. The Simulation results showed that the ride comfort can be improved by reinforce the frame, and the ride comfort can be improved by 5%∼10%. The results of this study need to be further examined through field testing.

Adequate visibility through the vehicle windshield over the entire driving period is of paramount practical significance. Thin water film (fog) that forms on the windshield mainly during the winter season would reduce and disturb the driver’s visibility. This water film originates from condensing water vapor on inside surface of the windshield due to low outside temperatures. Primary source of this vapor is the passenger’s breath, which condenses on the windshield. Hot and dry air which impinges at certain velocity and angle relative to the windshield helps to remove the thin water film (defogging) and hence improves driver’s visibility. Hence a well-designed demisting device will help to eliminate this fog layer within very short span of time and brings an accepted level of visibility. An attempt is made here to design and develop a demisting device for a commercial vehicle with the help of numerical and analytical approach and later on validated with experimental results.