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The use of polished aluminum fuselage skins has been a standard on U.S. commercial jet transport aircraft for decades. Increasingly stringent environmental regulations for paint stripping combined with fuel and maintenance savings allows consideration of flying polished non-painted aircraft. Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Embraer currently manufacture commercial aircraft with polished alclad aluminum fuselages. Commercial airlines such as American Airlines, USAir, Eastern, Northwest and ASA fly non-painted fleets. These customers require the aircraft to be delivered with a polished appearance incorporating minimum fleet graphics. The manufacturing of polished aircraft requires unique production and handling procedures to fabricate all exterior panels with identical color match and reflectivity.

MORE than 13,000,000 yd. of rubber-coated top-material was produced in this Country in 1926, and, in addition, approximately 6,000,000 yd. of other types of material, including pyroxylin and oil-coated fabrics, was used for automobile tops. Principal ingredients entering into the manufacture of rubber-coated top and deck material are base fabrics, crude and reclaimed rubber, naphtha, sulphur, accelerators, antioxidants, inert fillers, softeners, and varnishes. Methods of manufacture are much like those used in the production of cellulose-nitrate or pyroxylin-coated fabrics, and the types of fabric used and their preparation are similar. Processes of preparing the rubber compound, applying it to the fabric, varnishing the surface and embossing the material are described briefly.

The outermost fabric of an astronauts space suit is directly exposed to the various space environmental hazards and therefore has to withstand the various loads arising during EVA operation. In a previous study phase the Outer Fabric for a European Space Suit (OFFES) has been developed using advanced technology and special surface protection components. Different design versions have been manufactured - using 3-D weaving as well as 3-D knitting technology - and were subjected to a test campaign covering the investigation of mechanical/tribological, chemical, thermooptical and micrometeorite and debris (M/D) protection properties of the material. The current phase is concerned with the further development of the fabric for its application on a space suit. For this purpose an arm segment of a thermal and micrometeorite protection garment (TMP) has been manufactured using a further improved version of the OFFES fabrics.

To reduce the amount of fuel vapor created in the fuel tank, we developed a variable-capacity, plastic bladder fuel tank that is efficient, reliable, and provides permeation prevention performance. This bladder fuel tank changes in shape and total capacity in accordance with the volume of fuel it holds. Thus, in contrast to the conventional fuel tank, it can dramatically reduce the amount of fuel vapor that is ordinarily created in the fuel tank while the vehicle is being refueled, parked, or driven. The bladder fuel tank has been adopted in the Vapor Reducing Fuel Tank System of the North American model Prius, a vehicle that operates under the Toyota Hybrid System (THS), which complies with the SULEV exhaust emission requirement. This paper primarily gives an outline of the technology for manufacturing the bladder fuel tank.

The most significant obstacle to the widespread use of carbon-fiber-based composites by the automotive industry is the high cost of carbon fibers in comparison to other potential structural materials. Carbon fibers are currently produced by thermal pyrolysis of a polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor to obtain the desired properties. The most significant cost factors in the process are the high cost of precursors and the high capital equipment and energy costs in conversion to carbon fiber. The Department of Energy is supporting developmental efforts to reduce costs in both precursor production and conversion areas. This paper describes developments in the conversion process. Because of the unsuccessful results of manufacturing carbon fibers through their direct heating with microwave radiation (variable frequency microwave [VFM] and single frequency microwave [SFM] energy), new avenues were explored for this processing.

Effusion cooled combustor designs for gas turbine engines offer improvements over traditional cooling approaches. The effusion technique, also known as transpiration, or multi-hole, employs minute cooling passages through the wall to be cooled. Effusion cooling provides increased cooling effectiveness, enabling higher performance. Additionally, effusion cooling offers manufacturing benefits, due to its simplicity of design, which result in decreased cost. The design also provides many challenges due to the enormous number of cooling holes required in an effusion cooled component. Candidates for hole drilling, laser and electron beam drilling, are compared with respect to methodology, equipment, hole characteristics, and economics.

There are three major areas of large thermoplastics component development on European cars; instrument panels, bumpers and body side mouldings. Unlike the equivalent parts in the U.S. which are normally painted these parts in Europe are commonly self-coloured with a grained finish. In addition, there are many new thermoplastics components such as grille panels and spoilers which are painted body colour, must be moulded and finished to tight tolerances and help to bring total plastics usage on new European cars to over 10% of total vehicle weight. The development and manufacture of some of the larger components is discussed, with the large self coloured all plastics front and rear ends and the painted grille panels used on the new European Ford Sierra described in detail.

This paper describes and illustrates some of the manufacturing techniques being used to produce steel spur gears, helical gears, and splines. Applications of these techniques and their suitability based upon the end use of the product are also indicated. The paper closes with a brief discussion of recent developments in manufacturing techniques relating to this type of hardware.

Dimensional instability inherent to the extrusion process and the tolerance stack up due to bending and reshaping processes induce a part-to-part variation, which exceeds what is typically acceptable for an automated assembly process. Therefore, advanced forming methods such as stretch bending, hydroforming/calibration, etc., are required to provide tight dimensional tolerances. However, some of these technologies are relatively new, therefore, there is not an extensive knowledge base to assist the product and process designers working with aluminum extrusions. Several issues related to the design of extruded profiles, bending, friction and formability have to be resolved to increase the number of applications in the automotive industry. This paper reviews the manufacturing system including hydroforming technology and its application to extruded aluminum profiles. Several issues related to alloy selection, design, bending, friction and formability will be highlighted.

Transmission quill gears are hot forged steel parts often used in constant mesh manual transmissions. The quill gear, which helps to transmit the power from input drive shaft to output shaft through driving gears. It’s having external teeth which is positively engaged with driving gear and sleeve. During gear selection sleeve take load from input shaft and transmit to driven gear. Quill gear directly engaged with driving gears on outer surface and bearing in inner surface which needs to have high strength and durability. These properties can be improved by carburization heat treatment in existing design such processes can lead to increased costs. We have developed quill gear through powder metallurgical process and then cooled rapidly in the furnace to get high strength and wear properties. Material composition are optimized to suit for sinter hardening process conditions.

The Superbus was introduced as one of the option for the Zuiderzeelijn, a fast connection between Amsterdam and Groningen and resulted to be the best option; the others being three different types of high speed train and the magnetic levitation train. In order evaluate the feasibility of its implementation, the Dutch Ministry of Transport and Water Management has decided to fund the realization of a demonstrator. The Superbus is sustainable, fast, lightweight, and appealing and transports passengers and goods from point to point and drives at high speed (250 km/h) on its dedicated and relatively cheap infrastructure. The Superbus is 15 meter long, 2.5 m wide, 1.6m high and weighs less than 9 ton when fully loaded. The vehicle has to be able to brake or avoid an obstacle (detected by the navigation and control system) within a distance of 240m. Alongside that, static and dynamic loading conditions have rendered the structural design targets very demanding.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the manufacturing strategy for North American production of a third generation of heavy-duty automatic transmissions. This strategy consists of three key elements involving the product, the process for manufacturing the product and the people systems required to design, implement and continuously improve both the product and the process. Each of these elements must be balanced with the other two to provide a stable platform for the entire manufacturing enterprise. This is analogous to a three-legged milk stool as shown in Figure 1. Although there are linkages with the product design and people systems, the focus of this paper is the production process.

Increasing electrification of the vehicle as well as the demands of increased connectivity presents automotive manufacturers with formidable challenges. Automakers and suppliers likely will encounter three practices that will influence how they develop and manufacture highly connected vehicles and future e-mobility platforms: 1) hierarchical production processes in fixed footprints that do not share data freely; 2) lack of real-time, in-line quality inspection and correction processes for complex miniaturized electronic components; and 3) floor to enterprise resource and execution systems that can collect, analyze and respond to rapidly changing production needs.

This paper presents highlights of assembly operations for the new 1975 model Ford Econoline III. All major assembly operations are covered. However, particular emphasis is placed on the automation used in body assembly. Econoline body and paint operations are performed at Ford's Ohio Truck Plant. Painted bodies are transported via special vans to the Lorain Assembly Plant for trim, frame and final assembly operations.

Does the well-reported employment shift to services imply that the U.S. is losing its industrial base? Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that despite a declining employment share, manufacturing industries continue to account for a large proportion of output. New projections to the year 2000 show more job losses for manufacturing, but because of new technologies and productivity gains, production keeps pace with GNP growth. The foreign trade situation improves as the falling value of the dollar makes imports more expensive, but the real trade balance still remains negative. The auto industry faces slower growth due to changing demographics.

Electronic equipment used in complex air, sea, and space vehicles is designed to be “line replaceable” in order to facilitate maintenance without major disruption of schedules. Unscheduled removals trigger a chain of events exposing the suspect equipment to none-to-gentle shipping and handling enroute to the test bench. Hare often than not a failure is not indentified, and the equipment is subjected to further abuse on the way back to the line. This paper discusses some of the potential causes of these “unconfirmed” failures and suggests some practical design approaches to minimize the problem. AERONAUTICAL AND AVIONIC engineers can take great pride in the advances they have made in their individual disciplines over the past 40 years. Despite the effectiveness of each, aircraft continue to be plagued with unconfirmed avionics removals, just as they were in the past. It is in this area that it seems little progress has been made.

Map matching determines which road a vehicle is on based on inaccurate measured locations, such as GPS points. Simple algorithms, such as nearest road matching, fail often. We introduce a new algorithm that finds a sequence of road segments which simultaneously match the measured locations and which are traversable in the time intervals associated with the measurements. The time constraint, implemented with a hidden Markov model, greatly reduces the errors made by nearest road matching. We trained and tested the new algorithm on data taken from a large pool of real drivers.