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Uniaxial fatigue tests of rubber dumbbell specimens under different mean and amplitude of strain are carried out. An Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) model optimized by Dragonfly Algorithm (DA) is proposed to predict the fatigue life of rubber based on measured rubber fatigue life data. Mean and amplitude of strain and measured rubber fatigue life are taken as input variables and output variables respectively in DA-ELM model. For comparison, genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are used to optimize ELM parameters, and GA-ELM and PSO-ELM models are established. The comparison results show that DA-ELM model performs better in predicting the fatigue life of rubber with least dispersion. The coefficients of determination for the training set and test set are 99.47% and 99.12%, respectively. In addition, a life prediction model equivalent strain amplitude as damage parameter is introduced to further highlight the superiority of DA-ELM model.

The presence of residual stresses affects the fatigue response of welded components. In the present study of thick welded cantilever specimens, residual stresses were measured in two A36 steel samples, one in the as-welded condition, and one subjected to a short history of bending loads where substantial local plasticity is expected at the fatigue hot-spot weld toe. Extensive X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) measurements describe the residual stress state in a large region above the weld toe both in an untested as-welded sample and in a sample subjected to a short load history that generated an estimated 0.01 strain amplitude at the stress concentration zone at the weld toe. The results show that such a test will significantly alter the welding-induced residual stresses. Fatigue life prediction methods need to be aware that such alterations are possible and incorporate the effects of such cyclic stress relaxation in life computations.

Fasteners, commonly used in automotive industry, play an important role in the safety and reliability of the vehicle structural system. In practical application, bolted joints would never undergo fully reversed loading; there always will be positive mean stress on bolt. The mean stress has little influence on the fatigue life if the maximum stress is lower than a threshold which is near the yield stress of the bolt. However, when the sum of the mean stress and the stress amplitude exceeds the threshold, the endurance limit stress amplitude decreases fast as the mean stress increases. The purpose of this paper is to research the fatigue endurance limit of a fastener and establish the threshold for safe design in automotive application. In order to obtain the fatigue endurance limit at different mean stress levels, various mechanical tests were performed on M12x1.75 and M16x1.5 Class 10.9 fasteners using MTS test systems.

In order to enhance the efficiency of durability testing of automobile parts, a time-frequency domain accelerated editing method of road load time series of rubber mount on powertrain was discussed. Based on Stockwell Transform method and Accumulative Power Spectral Density, a new time-frequency domain accelerated editing method (ST-APSD) was proposed. The accumulative power spectral density was obtained by ST of the load time series signal of automobile powertrain rubber mounting force which is acquired by the real vehicle in the test field. Based on the accumulative power spectral density, the threshold value was proposed to identify and delete the small damage load fragments, and then the acceleration spectrum was obtained.

The variation of in-cylinder heat transfer with parameters such as engine speed, air-to-fuel ratio, coolant temperature and compression ratio were frequently studied in classical research. These experimentally-obtained relationships are important for improving in-cylinder heat transfer models, essential in developing CO2 reducing strategies. In this publication, a 2.0 liter compression ignition engine was tested in the pressurized motored configuration. This developed experimental setup allowed testing of the engine at speeds ranging between 1400 rpm and 3000 rpm, with peak in-cylinder gas pressures from 40 bar to 100 bar. The engine was motored using different gas compositions chosen specifically to have ratios of specific heats of 1.40, 1.50, 1.60 and 1.67 at room temperature. This enabled motored testing with peak in-cylinder bulk gas temperatures ranging from 700 K to 1500 K.

Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technology is a powerful tool in the field of experimental mechanics to obtain the full-field deformation/strain information of an object. It has been rapidly applied in industry in recent years. However, for the large-angle full-field strain measurement of small-sized cylindrical objects, it’s still a challenge to the DIC accurate measurement due to its small size and curved surface. In this paper, a measurement method based on the multi-camera DIC system is proposed to study the compressive performance of small-sized cylindrical materials. Three cameras form two stereo DIC measurement systems (1 and 2 cameras, and 2 and 3 cameras), each of which measures a part of the object. By calibrating three cameras at the same time, two stereos DIC coordinate systems can be unified to one coordinate system. Then match the two sets of DIC measurement data together to achieve large-angle measurement of the cylindrical surface.

Due to the reduced or less-frequent usages of the friction brakes and the lower brake rotor temperature on electrical vehicles (EV), corrosion would much likely occur on brake rotors. Using hard braking to clean the corroded rotor surfaces often leads to extra rotor surface wear. Improvement in corrosion and wear resistance is an important technological topic to brake rotors for EVs. Many original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and their suppliers are exploring surface treatments including laser cladding and thermal spray processes on cast iron rotors to combat the corrosion issues. However, mentioned surface coating processes increase the cost of brake rotors and there is a need to search for cost-effective coating processes. In this research, a new Al2O3-Ni composite coating was proposed for preparation of a commercial cast iron brake rotor using plasma electrolytic aluminating (PEA) followed by electroless nickel plating (ENP) processes.

The durability road test of a vehicle is an important test to verify the reliability of vehicle components. In order to carry out the durability bench test for drive shaft systems of all-terrain vehicles, a method for acquiring time domain signals of articulation angles of the CVJ, input torque, and rotational speeds of drive shaft systems is proposed. The acquired load spectrum of drive shaft systems is preprocessed including deleting small amplitudes, de-drifting, deburring, filtering, etc. Peaks and valleys are extracted from the preprocessed load spectrum. Based on the graphic method and the estimator stabilization method, the upper and lower thresholds of the time domain extrapolation of the load spectrum are determined, and then the peaks and valleys excesses that exceed the upper and lower thresholds are extracted. The generalized pareto distribution function is used to fit the distribution of peaks and valleys excesses.

There are numerous activities in the automotive industry in which a vehicle drives a pre-defined route multiple times such as portable emissions measurement systems testing or real-world electric vehicle range testing. The speed profile is not the same for each drive cycle due to uncontrollable real-world variables such as traffic, stoplights, stalled vehicles, or weather conditions. It can be difficult to compare each run accurately. To this end, this paper presents a method to compare and quantify the repeatability of real-world on-road vehicle driving schedules using dynamic time warping (DTW). DTW is a well-developed computational algorithm which compares two different time-series signals describing the same underlying phenomenon but occurring at different time scales. DTW is applied to real-world, on-road drive cycles, and metrics are developed to quantify similarities between these drive cycles.

Internal combustion engines must be individually tested at the end of the manufacturing process. In recent years classical hot test stands, where the engine is run for several minutes, are being replaced by cold test alternatives. The latter allow fast testing cycles using an external motoring device without using any fuel. The absence of fuel and combustion lowers the health and safety requirements for the plant itself and subsequent engine transport, but this comes at the cost of additional difficulties for the verification of the correct assembly and operation of the combustion system hardware. This paper presents a cold test concept, which includes dedicated measurements and algorithms for the detection of common failures in the manufacturing process, including those of the combustion hardware.

The vehicle suspension plays a significant role in alleviating the vibrations translated from the rough road and most of the vibrations are dissipated by the hydraulic shock absorber. Vibration energy harvesting technology is widely concerned for the self-powered wireless sensor system in intelligent vehicle. However, the system dynamic characteristics are influenced by the Ampere force which induced by the electro-magnetic induction of the vibration energy recovery system. Considering the mechanical electromagnetic coupling, a dynamic model of a quarter vehicle with vibration energy recovery system is established. The additional dynamic stiffness and normalized damping characteristics of the electromagnetic system are investigated by applying the harmonic displacement excitations with different frequencies.

Suspension kinematics and compliance strongly influence the handling performance of the vehicle. The kinematics and compliance characteristics are determined by the suspension geometry and stiffness of suspension bodies and elastic components. However, it is usually inefficient to model all the joints, bushings, and linkage deformation in a full vehicle model. By transforming the complex modeling problem into a data-driven problem tends to be a good solution. In this research, the neural-network-based suspension kinematics and compliance model is built and implemented into a 17 DOF full vehicle model, which is a hybrid model with state variables expressed in the global coordinate system and vehicle coordinate system. The original kinematics and compliance characteristics are derived from multibody dynamics simulation of the suspension system level.

Electric vehicles driven by in-wheel-motor have the advantages of compact structure and high transmission efficiency, which is one of the most ideal energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and safe driving forms in the future. However, the addition of the in-wheel-motor significantly increases the unsprung mass of the vehicle, resulting in a decrease in the mass ratio of the vehicle body to the wheel, which will deteriorate the ride comfort and safety of the vehicle. To improve the vibration performance of in-wheel-motor driven vehicles, a semi-active inerter-spring-damper (ISD) suspension with in-wheel-motor (IWM) dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) of the electric wheel is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a structure of in-wheel-motor DVA is proposed, which converts the motor into a dynamic vibration absorber of the wheel to suppress the vibration of the unsprung mass.

This paper investigates the effect of tire inflation pressure on the directional stability of All Wheel Drive (AWD) vehicles during high-speed off-road maneuvers over different soft terrains such as loam, sand and clay. For this purpose, a fourteen-degrees-of-freedom (14-DOF) full parametrized vehicle model is employed and numerically simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment to represent the full vehicle body dynamics such as roll, yaw and pitch motions. In order to calculate tire forces and moments over deformable terrains, the AS2TM Soft Soil Tire Model was successfully integrated with the vehicle model which enabled the possibility of changing tire pressure and consequently investigate its effect on vehicle dynamics. Numerous simulations are carried out to examine vehicle handling in case of different tires inflation pressure during steady state turning maneuvers such as ramp steer input.

The dynamic characteristics of hydraulic damping rubber isolators (such as hydraulic bushing and hydraulic mount) are related to excitation amplitude and frequency. Based on the lumped parameter model of hydraulic damping rubber isolator, a unified linear model of complex stiffness is derived and its deficiency is pointed out. Based on the derived linear model, this paper considers the nonlinear damping of inertia channel and the nonlinear stiffness of the upper chamber of the hydraulic damping rubber isolator, so as to establish a new nonlinear model, which can reflect the amplitude and frequency dependence of the dynamic characteristics of the hydraulic damping rubber isolator. Finally, the nonlinear model is used to analyze the dynamic response of hydraulic damping rubber isolator under harmonic excitation and random excitation respectively, and the results are compared with the test results.

For vehicles equipped with dry dual clutch transmission, due to the diversity of starting conditions, it is a nontrivial task for control strategy to meet the requirements of all kinds of complex starting conditions, which is easy to cause large starting shock and serious clutch wear. Therefore, it is proposed in this paper an adaptive control strategy for complex starting conditions by adjusting two clutches to participate in the starting process at the same time. On the basis of establishing the transmission system model and clutch model, the starting conditions are identified in terms of starting speed, road adhesion and driver's intention, in which the driver's intention is identified by fuzzy reasoning model. Based on the identification of starting conditions and considering the safety principle, it is selected the appropriate starting gear and clutch combination mode, and adjusted the combination speed of the two clutches to carry out an adaptive control strategy.

The stair phase coding method is an important phase unwrapping method, but needs to project and capture many fringe patterns. Therefore, to reduce the number of fringe patterns, we propose a stair phase coding method based on arc cosine with only four patterns. We project and capture a set of three-step phase-shift sinusoidal fringe patterns and a cosine pattern encoding stair phase, and then we compute the wrapped phase and background light from the three-step phase-shift sinusoidal fringe patterns, normalized cosine pattern can be estimated via background light, and the cosine pattern encoding stair phase. Arc cosine calculation is applied to the normalized cosine pattern to obtain the stair phase, then the fringe order is determined from the stair phase. A semi-periodic fringe order correction algorithm based on the dilation image processing technique is proposed to ensure the accuracy of fringe order. The continuous phase is obtained from the wrapped phase and the fringe order.

In this paper, a linear oscillatory actuator (LOA) with moving magnets used in active engine mount is modeled and theoretically analyzed considering its performance decline at high temperature. Firstly, a finite element model (FEM) of the LOA with moving magnets is established. The actuator force is decomposed to ampere force and cogging force through formation mechanism analysis. By using the FEM, ampere forces and cogging forces of the LOA with moving magnets under different current loads and different mover positions are calculated. The FEM and calculation method are validated by bench level test. The voice coil constant and cogging coefficient at normal temperature are identified, which indicates the actuator force is a linear model related to the current and the mover position.

Decreasing fuel consumption in Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) is a key target for engine developers in order to achieve the CO2 emissions limits during a standard cycle. In this context, reduction of engine friction could help meet those targets. The use of Low Viscosity Engine Oils (LVEOs), which is currently one of the avenues to achieve such reductions, was studied in this manuscript through a validated numerical simulation model that predicts the friction of the engine’s piston-cylinder unit, journal bearings and camshaft. These frictional power losses were obtained for four different lubricant formulations which differ in their viscosity grades and design. Results showed a maximum friction variation of up to 6% depending on the engine operating condition, where the major reductions came from hydrodynamic-dominated components such as journal bearings, despite an increase in friction in boundary-dominated components such as the piston-ring assembly.

In the electric limited slip differential (eLSD) of an All-Wheel-Drive system, the ball ramp provides a major role in the facilitation of power flow by cam motion. When an electromechanical motor rotates the gear-attached drive plate in the ball ramp, the ball is inclined along the ramp’s geometry and resultantly pushes the static plate upside. This axial movement causes the engagement and disengagement of the clutch pack located on the upper side of the ball ramp. Therefore, depending on the ramp’s geometry, the performance of the ball ramp is maintained. In regards to our test research, ball ramp is weaker for wear than the fatigue failure, which is commonly occurred to rolling behavior. The load associated with the repeated oscillations is what specifically causes wear on the ramp. When the wear occurs, the ball position becomes offset on the wear region, which causes a change in motion during clutch engagement and can therefore affect the overall input torque.