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The brake performance is one of the most important performances in the automotive active safety, and it is the main measure of automotive active safety. Thus, to develop a platform for the braking system is quite significant. Based on the object-oriented technology, the platform for braking system is developed by making use of Visual C++ 6.0 development tool. By using the VC++ development tool and doing secondary development on other softwares, the software possesses powerful features, such as brake plan selection, performance calculation, parametric modeling, finite element analysis and kinematics simulation, etc. An initial brake system can be designed, calculated and analyzed all in one. The living instance shows that the platform has friendly user interfaces, powerful functions and it can improve the precision and efficiency of brake design. The platform has been of great applied value and can also positively promote the design automation of vehicle's braking system.

Due to several indeterminate factors, the assessment of the durability performance of a vehicle body is traditionally accomplished using test methods. An analytical fatigue life prediction method (four-step durability process) that relies mainly on numerical techniques is described in this paper. The four steps comprising this process include the identification of high stress regions, recognizing the critical load types, determining the critical road events and calculation of fatigue life. In addition to utilizing a general purpose finite element analysis software for the application of the Inertia Relief technique and a previously developed fatigue analysis program, two customized programs have been developed to streamline the process into an integrated, user-friendly tool. The process is demonstrated using a full body, finite element model.

During frontal and rear end type collisions, very large forces will be imparted to the passenger compartment by the collapse of either front or rear structures. NCAP tests conducted by NHTSA involve, among other things, a door openability test after barrier impact. This means that the plastic/irreversible deformations of door openings should be kept to a minimum. Thus, the structural members constituting the door opening must operate during frontal and rear impact near the elastic limit of the material. Increasing the size of a structural member, provided the packaging considerations permit it, may prove to be counter productive, since it may lead to premature local buckling and possible collapse of the member. With the current trend towards lighter vehicles, recourse to heavier gages is also counterproductive and therefore a determination of an optimum compartment structure may require a number of design iterations. In this article, FEA is used to simulate front side door behavior.

Automotive product development requires higher degree of quality upfront engineering, faster CAE turn-around, and integration with other functional requirements. Prediction of potential durability concerns using analytical methods for sheet metal structures subjected to road loads and other customer uses has become very important. A process has been developed to provide design direction based upon peak loads, simultaneous peak loads, and vehicle program analytical or measured loads. It identifies critical loads at each input location and load sets for multiple input locations, filters load time histories, selects critical areas and analyzes for fatigue life. Several case studies have been completed. The results show that the variations are consistent with the accuracies in finite element analysis, road load data acquisition, and fatigue calculation methods.

According to the resonant pavement crusher's work principle, its front frame mounted with the resonance system must meet the needs of the structural requirements. To satisfy the strength and stiffness requirement and avoid the resonance, the natural frequency of the front frame should be designed away from the crusher's working frequency. In this paper, the author builds a finite element model of the front frame and analyses its modal. According to the modal analysis results, the fourth modal frequency is close to the working frequency of the crusher. So the front frame should be optimized. In the finite element model, the front frame has been divided into a number of components of shell elements. Through optimal Latin hypercube experimental design, the author analyses the different component thickness's relationship of the frequencies of the front frame. The components with higher correlation coefficient have been chosen as the variables of optimization.

In order to predict the thermal fatigue life of the internal combustion engine exhaust manifold effectively, it was necessary to accurately obtain the unsteady heat transfer process between hot streams and exhaust manifold all the time. This paper began with the establishment of unsteady coupled heat transfer model by using serial coupling method of CFD and FEA numerical simulations, then the bidirectional thermal coupling analysis between fluid and structure was realized, as a result, the difficulty that the transient thermal boundary conditions were applied to the solid boundary was solved. What's more, the specific coupling mode, the physical quantities delivery method on the coupling interface and the surface mesh match were studied. On this basis, the differences between strong coupling method and portioned treatment for solving steady thermal stress numerical analysis were compared, and a more convenient and rapid method for solving static thermal stress was found.

Radiative cooling uses the cold space source to cool the object. The radiative cooling film prepared based on the principle can reduce the fuel consumption of automobile air conditioning refrigeration. In this paper, according to the passive radiative cooling principle, taking SiO2 as the radiative cooling film of infrared radiation material, the theoretical cooling value of the passenger compartment of the automobile is calculated and analyzed based on the heat balance equation. The influence of radiative cooling film on the temperature field of passenger cabins was studied by finite element analysis. The results show that the cooling film made of SiO2 as passive radiation material has an apparent cooling effect on the passenger cabins. At the ambient temperature of 35.15°C, the theoretical cooling temperature is 6.7K. When the radiative cooling film is applied to automobiles, the cooling value of the passenger cabin body, seat, instrument panel, and other parts reaches 2.2K-5.1K.

Air disc brake (ADB) is the execution unit of automobile brake, which plays a vital role in traffic safety. Lever is a very important driving as well as stress part of ADB. However, seldom periodical or thesis has given specifications about the lever. In this paper, working principle of the lever is illustrated in detail. Finite element analysis (FEA) of the lever is conducted and some structural problems of the lever are found out. Finally, for the condition that the lever doesn't meet the strength requirement, topography optimization is introduced to improve the shape of lever. Simulation results show that the strength of the lever improved obviously with the optimization, and analysis method as well as optimization method in this paper is feasible.

Hydraulic retarder is one of main auxiliary braking devices of the vehicle. When the vehicle is braking, a great pressure from high-speed fluid is received by hydraulic retarder blades. It is difficult to predict rational hydraulic retarder strength, owing to the complexity of the internal flow of oil. An optimal calculation way of hydraulic retarder strength is proposed based on CFD and FEA, concluding a reasonable result. The 3-D model of hydraulic retarder is built in the general CAD software. The model of fluid passage is extracted, according to the condition when the whole flow passage is filled with oil, and imported to CFD software. The inner flow field of hydraulic retarder is analyzed and the hydraulic surface pressure distribution of the hydraulic retarder blade is obtained at the highest rotary speed of turbine wheel.

One of the many computer oriented structural programs which utilizes the finite element technique is briefly discussed. Examples are presented to demonstrate the application of this program to actual product engineering structural problems. Correlation between predicted deflections and stresses and those obtained in the laboratory are presented. Computer graphics provide a unique method of visually interrogating input data and displaying output data. Graphs, stress contours, and deflected structures obtained by this method are presented.

The European safety regulation plan regarding frontal barrier offset impact calls for 30° angular impact protection in 1995 and a perpendicular 40% offset deformable barrier impact protection in the 1998 time frame. However, various other governmental and private agencies are looking at alternative test conditions. The Auto Motor and Sport Magazine and other insurance agencies have been conducting rigid barrier front impact tests at 40 and 50% offsets. In this study various test conditions were examined analytically. Detailed finite element models were developed to understand the implications of these impact conditions. The models provided insight into energy management mechanism, load transfer and vehicle deformation patterns due to offset impacts on to perpendicular and angular barriers. Several potential offset conditions were simulated using the FEA models.

As an off-road racing car, driving conditions for a Baja racing car are particularly complex. Extreme working conditions such as deep pits and rocky roads have put higher demand on structural strength and frame safety. To solve this problem, extreme working conditions are first studied to check the safety of the steel tube frame of Baja racing cars. Secondly, based on Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) to explore the frame's characteristics, analyze the frame's six-order mode, make the corresponding optimization, and solve the resonance problem caused by engine excitation and other factors. Finally, the natural frequency of the frame is measured to verify the effectiveness of the NVH characteristic optimization results, and it is found that the experimental results match the theoretical values. The theoretical analysis results are mainly based on ANSYS software's static and modal analysis.

A key problem of designing a light off-road vehicle with separate frame construction is to improve its torsional characteristic, which has a significant influence on the performance of the vehicle. Inevitably, a certain distortion of the body would be produced by the vibration and impact passing from the road. In present research, an analysis model of light off-road vehicle is established based on the theories and methods of finite element (FEM). The static stiffness of the body is simulated and the deformation of openings on the body, mainly the windows and the doors of the vehicle is studied. On the working conditions of torsion and braking combination, torsion and cornering combination, diagonal dangling, ultimate torsion of unilateral wheels and diagonal wheels, the static strength of separate frame construction is studied as well. The stress concentration regions are obtained according to the results of simulation.

This paper addresses the brake pad particle emission during the braking process of a vehicle in motion. The frictional-constant contact between the disc brake and pads results in an increased temperature and wear of the pads. The emission of brake pad particles into the atmosphere leads to an increase in air pollution and hence becomes hazardous to the human body. In this paper, a wheel brake disc is installed in a ventilation system where the specific air flow is introduced in order to investigate the thermal performance and the emission of particles from the brake pads. A mathematical model using the fundamental parameters of the brake disc and ventilation system is established. The behavior of the heat transfer is studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The particle emission rate from the pads is calculated under the assumption of uniform constant pressure distribution at the contact surface of the brake disc and pad.

Failure to provide consistent results in the parallel implementation of a crash simulation can render the simulation code unusable as a design heuristic. This paper describes a parallel implementation of a crash simulation package, FCRASH, which was designed from inception for parallel implementation. An example will be given which illustrates the variation a CAE crash analyst may encounter if the problem of parallel consistency is ignored. Techniques used in FCRASH to deliver consistent results in a parallel environment on a CRAY T90 parallel supercomputer will be discussed. This work has resulted in a robust crash simulation code that delivers consistent results in parallel environments on a variety of shared memory processors. Finally, problems remaining for delivering the same level of robustness in a distributed memory message passing version of an explicit crash simulation program will be examined.

The lightweight design of a vehicle can save manufacturing costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the off-road vehicle and truck, the chassis frame is the most important load-bearing assembly of the separate frame construction vehicle. The frame is one of the most assemblies with great potential to be lightweight optimized. However, most of the vehicle components are mounted on the frame, such as the engine, transmission, suspension, steering system, radiator, and vehicle body. Therefore, boundaries and constraints should be taken into consideration during the optimal process. The finite element (FE) model is widely used to simulate and assess the frame performance. The performance of the frame is determined by the design parameters. As one of the largest components of the vehicle, it has a lot of parameters. To improve the optimum efficiency, sensitivity analysis is used to narrow the range of the variables.

The anti-roll bar is an important structural component of the automobile, which can effectively prevent the automobile from rolling and improve the safety of the automobile during steering. In the design of the current anti-roll bar, the stiffness is determined by empirical or oversimplified mathematical models, often not reaching the optimal value. In this paper, eight parameters are used to determine the structure of the anti-roll bar. Combining the Deformation Energy theorem and Castigliano’s theorem, a mathematical model of the stiffness is established. The optimal solution and corresponding parameter values of the mathematical model are obtained by nonlinear programming and genetic algorithm. The influence of structural parameters on the anti-roll bar stiffness is analyzed, and the regular pattern of design is obtained. In addition, the finite element method is used to verify the stiffness solution model.

One of the methods used to mechanically fasten a component such as a radio, cluster or finish panel to a plastic instrument panel substrate involves driving a screw through a metal push-nut which has been inserted into an opening in the plastic instrument panel substrate. A primary failure mode which has been observed for this type of joint is cracking of the plastic substrate surrounding the metal push-nut. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has been employed to optimize the design of the push-nut opening in a polycarbonate substrate and minimize the potential for cracking of the plastic. For the FEA, the implicit version of the ABAQUS program was used. It was determined that the induced stress in the plastic instrument panel substrate from the fastening process can be minimized by controlling the dimensions of the push-nut opening such that push-nut recess is minimized and the thickness of the substrate in the region whether the push-nut engages is optimized.

This paper presents the final phase of a study to develop the modeling methodology for an advanced steering assembly with a safety-enhanced steering wheel and an adaptive energy absorbing steering column. For passenger cars built before the 1960s, the steering column was designed to control vehicle direction with a simple rigid rod. In severe frontal crashes, this type of design would often be displaced rearward toward the driver due to front-end crush of the vehicle. Consequently, collapsible, detachable, and other energy absorbing steering columns emerged to address this type of kinematics. These safety-enhanced steering columns allow frontal impact energy to be absorbed by collapsing or breaking the steering columns, thus reducing the potential for rearward column movement in severe crashes. Recently, more advanced steering column designs have been developed that can adapt to different crash conditions including crash severity, occupant mass/size, seat position, and seatbelt usage.

Test methods to measure mechanical properties of adhesives and sealers such as elastic and shear moduli, Poisson's ratio and damping terms are reviewed. Both standard methods for determining true bulk mechanical properties and methods for determining engineering estimates of mechanical properties of adhesives and sealers “as used” in automotive applications are presented. Mechanical properties are important parameters for designing adhesively bonded and damped automotive structures. Properties such as modulus are typically used in finite element analysis modelling to aid design and optimization of automotive structures. This paper is given as a companion paper to “FEA (Finite Element Analysis) Modelling for Body-In-White Adhesives” by David Wagner, see SAE Paper #960784.