AUTOMOTIVE DOOR CLOSING EFFORTS STUDY

The door is the first system to interact with the customer, allowing the entrance into the vehicle, so it has been given great importance to its performance in all requirements. The automotive door related phenomena studies increased in the past years, once the customer and the market itself have changed their quality standards. The door closing effort is considered a quality issue by the customer, cases it is too high it contributes to quality decrease, based on ergonomics study, each OEM specifies to each vehicle an acceptable value for the closing effort. There is software that uses the finite element method and specific calculation plans for the door closing effort at project phase, but it is necessary lots of data usually not available for the engineer at concept phases. This study's objective is to measure each component contribution in door closing effort with the use of a simplified plan in order to help the product engineer in the door concept phases. Also to help on decisions related to the door Design concept early in the development, minimizing the impacts from possible required changes in later project phases. From a simplified model this plan was made and the output of it was compared to simulations of complex models (CAE). The proposed model has acceptable error, when compared to CAE models, showing the simplifications made were made using criteria in order to impact the less possible in the door closing effort value.