Reliability assessment of Audio generating devices- Horn

Due to increase in vehicular traffic on Indian roads honking frequency of horn have enormously increased especially in city driving conditions and during pick traffic hours. The current electro mechanical horns has mission life of 1 lac cycles in reference to Indian standards (IS 1884). But with increased usage pattern motivated us to recheck / validate efficacy of this requirement. The studies carried out revels the average horn blow frequency of 3 per kilometer for normal usages vehicles. When same is extrapolated to category based usage i.e. public transport vehicles, self-owned vehicle usage pattern, average horn blowing frequency comes to 5 times per kilometer which corresponds to 4.03 Lac cycles for vehicle mission life of 2.4 Lac Kms of vehicle. This advocates us to review the validation test specifications suitable to customer usage pattern to improve upon component reliability. It allows us early-stage prediction of failure / issues during development stage itself with improved and robust validation process, thereby enhancing overall customer satisfaction.