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In the modern and fast growing automotive sector, reliability & durability are two terms of utmost importance along with weight & cost optimization. Therefore it is important to explore new technology which has less weight, low manufacturing cost and better strength. The new technology developed always seek for a quick, cost effective and reliable methodology for its design validation so that any modification can be made by identifying the failures. This paper presents the rig level test methodology to validate and to correlate the CAE derived strain levels, life cycle & failure mode of newly developed light weight stabilizer link for EV Bus suspension

Design of a Cabin Tilting System of heavy trucks, a multi degree of freedom mechanism, is a challenge. Factors like adequate tilting angle, cabin styling, packaging, non interference of tilting system with ride comfort, forces in the system, specifications of the hydraulic system, are all very important for designing the system. Numerous considerations make the design process highly iterative hence longer design time. This paper primarily focuses on Kinematics and Dynamic analysis of the system in ADAMS and validation of system with real time testing results. Intention of this work is to make a parametric ADAMS model and link it to a Knowledge Based Engineering application to facilitate designer to quickly carry out design iterations for reducing development time. The Knowledge Based Engineering software is made using object oriented language called ‘Object Definition Language’ which has been developed using C and C++ software languages.

The main purpose of this study is the development of an innovative methodology for Heat Exchangers (HE) design to replace the conventional design procedures. The new procedure is based on the definition of a software package managed by modeFRONTIER, a multi-objective optimization software produced by ESTECO, able to create HE virtual models by targeting several objectives, like HE performance, optimal use of material, HE minimal weight and size and optimal manufacturability. The proposed methodology consists first in the definition of a workflow for the automatic CFD simulation of a parametric model of a periodic HE cellular element.

The hazardous bulk chemical liquid cargo transportation is usually made through highways, using special automotive devices, named semitrailer tank, a kind of mobile tank specially developed to perform this task, manufactured with many types of steel, selected according to the chemical characteristics of the product to be transported. Equipment sizing is made based on specific standards which include specified formulas, loading, and safety factors representing the design criteria of this type of device. Despite of the detailed design criteria for semitrailer tank, it has been observed failure of some pieces of equipment during operation, in a shorter effective life than that one considered in the design phase itself. Considering a detailed study of the stress distribution in this type of equipment, this paper shows a verification of the possibility of yielding failure in the semitrailer tank structure.

In this paper, a gain-scheduling optimal control approach is proposed to enhance yaw stability of articulated commercial vehicles through active braking of the proper wheel(s). For this purpose, an optimal feedback control is used to design a family of yaw moment controllers considering a broad range of vehicle velocities. The yaw moment controller is designed such that the instantaneous tractor yaw rate and articulation angle responses are forced to track the target values at each specific vehicle velocity. A gain scheduling mechanism is subsequently constructed via interpolations among the controllers. Furthermore, yaw moments derived from the proposed controller are realized by braking torque distribution among the appropriate wheels. The effectiveness of the proposed yaw stability control scheme is evaluated through software-in-the-loop (SIL) co-simulations involving Matlab/Simulink and TruckSim under lane change maneuvers.

SINCE 1954 the CIMTC Subcommittee has been engaged in a program to meet military requirements through industry's production of construction equipment which can give satisfactory cold weather performance down to temperatures of −65 F. Individual contracts for three crawler tractors and one motor grader were negotiated by ERDL for these projects, and their performance is discussed. Industry participation was subsequently expanded to include engineering tests in the cold weather conditions of the Mesabi Iron Range. This joint report of the Winterization Sub-committee of the CIMTC and ERDL Winterization Section consists of separate papers by various members and consultants of this Sub-committee and ERDL personnel.

Cast iron is generally thought of as a weak, dirty, cheap, brittle material that does not have a place in applications requiring high strength and defined engineering properties. While gray cast iron is relatively brittle by comparison with steel, ductile iron is not. In fact, ductile iron has strengths and toughness very similar to steel and the machinability advantages make an attractive opportunity for significant cost reductions. Gray and ductile iron bar stock is commercially available and can be used as a direct replacement in applications that are currently being made from carbon steel bar. Ductile iron bar stock conversions are very prevalent in many fluid power applications including glands and rod guides, cylinders, hydrostatic transmission barrels and in high-pressure manifolds. Automotive gears are being converted to ductile iron for its damping capacity and cost reductions.

Meet like-minded mobility engineersto discuss new legislation and regulations around thermal management, emissions control, safety, and energy conservation.

Meet like-minded mobility engineersto discuss new legislation and regulations around thermal management, emissions control, safety, and energy conservation.

September 17-19, 2019 │ Garden Grove, CA, USA

September 17-19, 2019 │ Garden Grove, CA, USA

Why should you attend the 2022 Thermal Management Systems Symposium

In Automotive, Steel wheels are exponentially replaced by Aluminum wheels because of its feather light, agile performance and better acceleration. One such widely used size is 11.75 x 22.5 wheels for trucks and trailer segment. During the design stage of 11.75 x 22.5 wheel, the valve hole was placed away from the stress concentration zone to reduce the stress on the holes and also the design was validated through all conventional wheel rim testing methodologies (Like CFT, RFT and Bi-axial) and the wheel passed all the test requirements. During the field trials, failures were observed on the valve holes, despite of this hole was away from stress concentration region. Understood from the field trials that, the regular testing was not able to simulate the real field conditions for this particular size and changed the boundary condition in our FEA to simulate the actual conditions. After changing the boundary conditions, we could able to observe more stress in valve hole.

An important emerging technical area is computer-based modeling of the various manufacturing processes that are used in many diverse industries. These models are used to optimize manufacturing techniques to reduce fabrication costs and improve the service performance. One manufacturing process important in steel fabrication is welding. It can be a useful tool to aid in reducing fabrication costs and service durability by optimizing the weld process and is the subject of this paper.

Welding has been used extensively in automotive components design due to its flexibility to be applied in manufacturing, high structural strength and low cost. To improve fuel economy and reduce material cost, weight reduction by optimized structural design has been a high priority in auto industry. In the majority of heavy duty vehicle's chassis components design, the ability to predict the mechanical performance of welded joints is the key to success of structural optimization. FEA (finite element analysis) has been used in the industry to analyze welded parts. However, mesh sensitivity and material properties have been major issues due to geometry irregularity, metallurgical degradation of the base material, and inherent residual stress associated with welded joints. An approach, equilibrium-equivalent structural stress method, led by Battelle and through several joint industrial projects (JIP), has been developed.

Front under run protection device (FUPD) is a regulatory requirement for passive safety of N2 & N3 category vehicle. This device gives effective protection for small vehicles (M1 or N1 category) against under running of big vehicles (N2 & N3 category) in the event of a frontal collision. FUPD generally consists of the front under run protector (FUP) and its mounting structure. As the compliance load target for N3 category is high, the FUP required achieving regulation target need to have high rigidity. This increases its size and hence the weight, Increase in weight has impact on payload and cost. To curtail the weight of FUP, in general Aluminum with higher strength is in use, but use of Aluminum increases the cost. So the main challenge in FUPD design is to achieve the design with optimal system weight & cost.

Shift quality of a manual transmission is a critical characteristic that is requires utmost care by the designers while structuring the transmission. Shift quality is affected by many factors viz. synchronizer design, shift fork design, shifter design, gear design, transmission oil selection etc. Designers have realized that shift fork is critical element for improving shift feel of a transmission. This paper focuses upon the reduction in weight of the overall transmission shift system by using steel inserts in aluminum shifter forks. No compromise on the stiffness and strength of the shift fork of a manual transmission is done. Stiffness and strength of shifter fork is optimized using contact pattern analysis and stiffness analysis on MSC Nastran. All the subsystem (i.e. synchronizer and the shift system component) are constrained to optimize the shift fork stiffness. A 5-speed manual transmission is used as an example to illustrate the same.

Design of suspension systems for Heavy Trucks is always challenging due to the heavy loads the system is exposed to and the long life requirements for the total system. Historical solutions were over designed structures to get the needed life and reliability. This always meant heavier parts. In today's economy, the vehicle weight of commercial heavy trucks is a very important feature for our customers and the end user. Lighter, well-designed suspension components provide better ride quality to the drivers through lower un-sprung weight, lower initial costs and greater payloads. The latest available structural optimization techniques are a business requirement for tomorrow's products. This paper describes the developed methodology used by DANA Engineers to design a weight optimized upper control arm for Commercial Heavy Trucks in step by step fashion. The method starts with determining the loads on the component part.

Weight reduction in construction equipment is sought to achieve energy conservation and also to comply with the vehicle safety and compliance regulations, managing the weight distribution across the rear and the front end of the equipment to achieve the optimum balancing. Of late the thrust on product weight has increased along with reduced time to market, leading to increased usage of structural optimization methods. This has been further supported by the availability of high performance computing at relatively low cost. VOC and CTQ tools provided the motivation and initial screening of the design variables. The structural optimization software provides an integrated platform for analysis as well as optimization of components. In this work, an optimization tool has been used for size and shape optimization of a construction equipment assembly and a commercial FEA package was used for verification and validation of the results.

The entire commercial vehicle industry is moving towards weight reduction to leverage on the latest materials available to benefit in payload & fuel efficiency. General practice of weight reduction using high strength steel with reduced thickness in reference to Roark’s formula does not consider the stiffness & dent performance. While this helps to meet the targeted weight reduction keeping the stress levels within the acceptable limit, but with a penalty on stiffness & dent performance. The parameters of stiffener like thickness, section & pitching are very important while considering the Stiffness, bucking & dent performance of a dumper body. The Finite Element Model of subject dumper body has been studied in general particularly on impact of dent performance and is correlated with road load data to provide unique solution to the product. The impact of payload during loading of dumper is the major load case.