Search Results

The increasing use and implementation of computer simulation in the vehicle engineering process has allowed for complex vehicles to be designed and tested in a virtual environment prior to a full-size vehicle being built. This approach is of particular importance in the commercial truck markets of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa where large truck-trailer combinations, often referred to as “road trains”, are becoming more common. Such trucks can carry more freight per vehicle; however their overall length and mass means additional safety standards must be in place to ensure a safely operating vehicle. To that end the National Transport Commission (NTC) Australia has been developing vehicle specifications called Performance Based Standards, or PBS. Performance Based Standards include specifications for longitudinal performance such as Startability, Gradeability, Acceleration Capability, and Tracking ability on a straight path.

In order to improve ride comfort and reduce interior noise of commercial vehicles, modal sensitivity analysis and optimization design of a commercial vehicle cab was carried out, which increased the first natural frequency of the optimized cab by 23.96%. The result of cab modal test verified the correctness of the finite element model and the effectiveness of the improving method. The structure-acoustic coupling model of the cab was established, and the acoustic response of the coupled sound field was predicted. The sound pressure level of the optimized cab was reduced. In comparison of the optimized cab with the original one, the optimization scheme was confirmed to be effective and reasonable.

In order to obtain the comprehensive evaluation of thermal management system for the retarder, the complete driveline thermal management model is built. The characteristic parameters for the thermal management system are determined and the hydromechanical characteristics for the retarder are fixed by the rig test. On the basis of the same whole vehicle driving cycle, comparing to the traditional mechanical-drive system, the independent-drive system makes the working temperature of the heat source more stable. Meanwhile the parasitic power caused by the radiator fan is decreased markedly on the condition that the heat reject requirement of the heat source is satisfied.

In order to meet the stringent crashworthy regulations and to improve the fuel economy more and more composite materials have been used in automotive industry. The damage and the corresponding failure mechanisms of the composite materials during loading are entirely different from the isotropic materials. The numerical modeling of the above and prediction of the corresponding performance parameters of a composite structure are very important. Normally, the numerical modeling of the composite structures was done with a single layer of shell or solid elements. However, the approach of using single layer of elements cannot capture the effect of delamination which causes the split of the composite structures through thickness. In order to prove this an axial impact study was conducted on cylindrical pultruded glass polyester composite tubes.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Coast Guard recently adapted increases in the average passenger weight used to calculate load and conduct safety analysis and tests in multiple modes of transportation. The Federal Transit Authority (FTA) has proposed similar measures. The increased passenger weight requirements were created in response to the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) documented rise in weight among the country's citizens and followed crash or failure incidents in which a cause was overweight equipment. The current certification requirements under CFR 49, Part 567 state that Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of a motor vehicle shall not be less than the sum of the unloaded vehicle weight, rated cargo weight and 150 pounds (68 kg) times the number of designated seating positions. Actual occupant weight distributions versus certified weight per occupant seat causes a potential conflict between a vehicle's in-use weight versus its certified GVWR.

This paper discusses research conducted by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) - Vehicle Technology Directorate (VTD) on advanced suspension control. ARL-VTD has conducted research on advanced suspension systems that will reduce the chassis vibration of ground vehicles while maintaining tire contact with the road surface. The purpose of this research is to reduce vibration-induced fatigue to the Warfighter as well as to improve the target aiming precision in-theater. The objective of this paper was to explore the performance effectiveness of various formulations of the Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) algorithm in a simulation environment. Each version of the control algorithm was applied to an identical model subjected to the same ground disturbance input and compared to a baseline passive suspension system. The control algorithms considered include a GPC with Implicit Disturbances, GPC with Explicit Disturbances, and GPC with Preview Control.

The automotive industry is heading towards introduction of newer and newer technology aimed at providing better comforts and value to the end user. The public/ private transport vehicles in urban/rural areas with FE has wide level of acceptance in South East Asian countries. The acceptance of FE buses is mainly because of the ram air cooling of the engine, lesser maintenance, higher fuel efficiency etc whereas rear engine buses with entry plus one step are deprived of these benefits. Hence, we have designed and developed a new Front Engine Semi -Low Floor bus having floor at E+1 step. The primary design challenge was to meet the uniform floor throughout the length of the vehicle. This uniqueness will help in easy ingress and egress of the passengers which helps in reducing the turn around rime of the vehicle. Other challenges includes, meeting the customer requirements in terms of application, load and duty cycle for this new design.

In the truck industry there is a continuous demand to increase the efficiency and to decrease the emissions. To acknowledge both these issues a waste heat recovery system (WHR) is combined with a partially premixed combustion (PPC) engine to deliver an efficient engine system. Over the past decades numerous attempts to increase the thermal efficiency of the diesel engine has been made. One such attempt is the PPC concept that has demonstrated potential for substantially increased thermal efficiency combined with much reduced emission levels. So far most work on increasing engine efficiency has been focused on improving the thermal efficiency of the engine while WHR, which has an excellent potential for another 1-5 % fuel consumption reduction, has not been researched that much yet. In this paper a WHR system using a Rankine cycle has been developed in a modeling environment using IPSEpro.

Semi-active suspension systems for ground vehicles have been the focus of research for several years as they offer improvements in vehicle comfort and handling. This kind of suspension has attracted more interest compared to active suspension systems especially due to lower cost and energy consumption. In this paper the capabilities of a semi-active front axle suspension are investigated for a commercial vehicle. A half-truck model of a 4x2 tractor and semitrailer combination is developed in Matlab/Simulink for this purpose. Also, a 2 DOF roll plane model is considered to capture the roll motion of the vehicle body mass. Employing the above-mentioned models, results from on-off and continuous variable semi-active damping systems are compared to the ones from the passive suspension system according to ride comfort and handling safety characteristics.

The basic scope of heavy-commercial vehicle (HCV) development which was just concentrated on fuel-economy, durability and performance feel is not capable of fulfilling the increasing customer expectations anymore. HCV developers concentrate on additional vehicle attributes such as steering, ride comfort, NVH, braking, ergonomics and exterior-interior design in order to provide the passenger-car like perception to HCV drivers during long distance drives. The objective of this paper is to present the model validation methodology and the optimization study on suspension & steering hard points of a HCV. The results of the optimization study on suspension kinematics and steering performance of the vehicle is verified using both full vehicle simulations and vehicle testing. A full vehicle ADAMS/Car model is used for the validation and optimization study which has beam-element leaf springs on solid axle and air springs on drive axle for front and rear, respectively.

Recent infrastructural developments and emerging automotive market in India has given an impetus to the transportation industry and has led to high end research activities in synchronization with growing customer demands and competition especially in last decade. Since average speeds in India has gone up from 50 kmph in the year 2000 to almost 100 kmph in 2011, even the Light Commercial Vehicles (5 to 9.6T) are gradually experiencing a shift from low speed to high speed goods carrier. These new age vehicles are developed with a driver centric outlook towards safety and comfort. They are better optimized and equipped to the changing needs of the consumer and road conditions. Increase in vehicle speed poses many challenges in terms of occupant safety and control. In view of this, refinement of different vehicle handling parameters with respect to steering system compliance becomes far more critical.

The Articulated Suspension Exploratory Platform (ASEP) is developed in an effort to improve the characteristics and capabilities of the existing recently developed Surface Ground Mobility Platform SGMP. Special attention is placed on the design of the passive suspension mechanism in order for the platform to be suitable for operation in remote and challenging environments. To improve the capacity of the suspension and the overall quality, different designs have been analyzed based on a number of system requirements. The advantages of the final design are its linear motion, obstacle capacities, slope climbing and down-hill stability, as well as compact size and low cost.

In a new technology called “in wheel motor,” in which the motor is installed in the wheel, the electric vehicle can become more compact, which leads to a new type of mobility. Moreover, the front wheel steering is controlled by an electrical unit instead of the traditional mechanical unit of a steering wheel inside the car. In such a “steer-by-wire” method, the motor uses an electric signal. Because the degrees-of-freedom of this steer control are increased and a variety of steer controls based on the electric signal are possible, further improvement of the control stability is needed. In other words, the steer control technique can pose a problem for drivers, and so further research in this area is needed. That is, proportional derivative steering assistance can improve emergency evasion performance and the steering delay upon counter steering. Moreover, rear-wheel active steering can improve vehicle response during emergency evasion maneuvers.

A vehicle braking system is used to provide acceptable drivability of the vehicle and ensure safety in different emergency situations that the vehicle may encounter. The braking system is used also as an integrated sub-system in many other important vehicle driving systems such as traction control, adaptive cruise control, accident avoidance and other vehicle systems in which the braking system plays an important role. This paper is dedicated to provide an accurate and at the same time simple enough hydro-mechanical braking system mathematical model that takes brake pad wear impact on the system pressure dynamics into consideration. A wear simulation procedure based on the concept of Archard's wear law is used and integrated in the nonlinear braking system model with flow compressibility taken into consideration. The presented model simulation results and the experimental tests results show good agreement and validate the confidence in the proposed model.

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.

Braking system is one of the most important system in the vehicle. In this paper, a general methodology for the design of braking system for a light military tracked vehicle is discussed in detail. It may be considered as a guide for predicting the values of various braking terms (such as brake force, brake torque, system pressure required, pedal force etc.) for the given inputs. The effects on these braking terms due to the variation of the inputs are also analyzed. A complete study of different types of brake actuation system has been done so that the appropriate one can be selected. A methology has been derived for braking system design for tracked vehicle and a program is written for the same.

Subject paper focuses primarily on non uniform tire wear problem of front steered wheels in a pickup model. Cause and effect analysis complemented with field vehicle investigations helped to identify some of the critical design areas. Investigation revealed that steering geometry of the vehicle is undergoing huge variations in dynamic condition as compared to initial static setting. Factors contributing to this behavior are identified and subsequently worked upon followed by a detailed simulation study in order to reproduce the field failures on test vehicles. Similar evaluation with modified steering design package is conducted and results are compared for assessing the improvements achieved. In usual practice, it is considered enough if Steering Geometry parameters are set in static condition and ensured to lie within design specifications.

Dynamic “Game Theory” brings together different features that are keys to many situations in control design: optimization behavior, the presence of multiple agents/players, enduring consequences of decisions and robustness with respect to variability in the environment, etc. In previous studies, it was shown that vehicle stability can be represented by a cooperative dynamic/difference game such that its two agents (players), namely, the driver and the vehicle stability controller (VSC), are working together to provide more stability to the vehicle system. While the driver provides the steering wheel control, the VSC command is obtained by the Nash game theory to ensure optimal performance as well as robustness to disturbances. The common two-degree of freedom (DOF) vehicle handling performance model is put into discrete form to develop the game equations of motion. This study focus on the uncertainty in the inputs, and more specifically, the driver's steering input.

Rollover Protective Structures (ROPSs) are used in off-highway vehicles to protect operator in case of accidents involving overturning of vehicle. The role of a ROPS is to absorb the energy of Rollover without violating the protected operator zone. The performance of a ROPS is determined by its ability to absorb energy under prescribed loading conditions. The performance depends upon design parameters, such as tube thicknesses, material grades, ROPS tube cross-sections, etc., that define the structure. In this paper, we describe a method that uses Design of Experiments (DOE) to determine the correlation between the performance of a ROPS for a small tractor and its critical design parameters. The correlation results are discussed for two types of loading conditions, namely “front push loading” and “side push loading”. The correlation obtained is further used to identify the optimal design parameters for maximum energy absorption under constraints on allowable deflections.

The vehicle pull (sideways) is a complex outcome of many parameters in an automobile vehicle. This is mainly due to steering, suspension, brake, wheels and chassis parameters. The road conditions like road camber also plays an important role in vehicle pull behavior. All efforts are put in design and manufacturing processes to maintain controlled vehicle pull in normal driving condition. Even though normal vehicle pull seems to be in acceptance limit (subjectively), its intensity increases many folds at the time of harsh braking. In these kind of panic situations where driver firmly holds on the steering wheel, it is expected that the vehicle should stop without deviating too much sideways from its intended straight line path to avoid any kinds of accidents. This work is an outcome of systematic study carried out to understand the root cause of brake pull as a field complaint on current production vehicles and adopting best possible solutions to minimize the brake pull.