Browse Topic: Trunks
In vehicle development, occupant-centered design is crucial to ensuring customer satisfaction. Key factors such as visibility, access, interior roominess, driver ergonomics, interior storage and trunk space directly impact the daily experience of vehicle occupants. While automakers rely on engineering metrics to guide architectural decisions, however in some cases doesn’t exist a clear correlation between these quantitative parameters and the subjective satisfaction of end users. This study develops a methodology which addresses that gap by proposing the creation of quantitative satisfaction curves for critical engineering metrics, providing a robust tool to support decision-making during the early stages of vehicle design. Through a combination of clinics, research, and statistical analysis, this project outlines a step-by-step process for developing (dis)satisfaction curves, offering a clearer understanding of how dimensions like headroom, glove box volume, and A-pillar obscuration influence occupant perception. This project highlights the importance of aligning engineering targets with human-centered insights, enabling the delivery of more comfortable, user-focused vehicles. Ultimately, this research contributes to the development of a systematic approach for integrating subjective feedback into objective design criteria, enhancing overall product quality and customer satisfaction.
During the early phase of vehicle development, one of the key design attributes to consider is the trunk. Trunk is the pillar that is responsible for user’s accommodate their baggage and make into customer needs in engineer metrics. Therefore, it is one of the key requirements to be considered during the vehicle design. Certain internal vehicle trunk characteristics such as the trunk height and length are engineer metrics that influence the occupants’ perception for trunk. One specific characteristic influencing satisfaction is the rear opening width lower for notch back segment, which is the subject of this paper. The objective of this project is to analyze the relationship between the rear opening width lower with the occupant’s satisfaction under real world driving conditions, based on research, statistical data analysis and dynamic clinics.
In nature, many organisms like octopuses with their flexible tentacles or elephants with their trunks, exhibit remarkable dexterity. Inspired by these natural structures, researchers aim to develop highly flexible continuum robots that offer robustness and safety. Ideally, a continuum robot is characterized by many degrees of freedom (DOFs) and the number of joints, more than needed for most tasks. These characteristics allow them to adjust and modify their shape dynamically, enabling them to avoid obstacles and unexpected situations. However, their complex movements make it difficult to characterize their shape and motion.
Anyone who has ever tried to pack a family-sized amount of luggage into a sedan-sized trunk knows this is a hard problem. Robots struggle with dense packing tasks, too. For the robot, solving the packing problem involves satisfying many constraints, such as stacking luggage so suitcases don’t topple out of the trunk, heavy objects aren’t placed on top of lighter ones, and collisions between the robotic arm and the car’s bumper are avoided.
The SAE J1100 based standard cargo volume index methods and predefined luggage objects are very specific to United States population. The European luggage volume calculation and standard luggage calculations are primarily based on DIN and ISO standards. Luggage volume declaration by manufacturers are based on any of these methods. The calculations are complicated and there is a possibility of declaring different values for similar luggage compartments. The major purchase decision of vehicle is based on its luggage capacity and current methods are very limited to make an intelligent decision by a customer. Market specific customer usage patterns for luggage requirements and protecting them in vehicle architecture upfront in concept stage is important to retain the market position and buying preference of customers. The usage patterns is collected from customer clinics and marketing inputs. These patterns are used to build virtual luggage models representing the actual luggage at different scenarios like Travel to airport, Casual drive etc. These blocks are stacked up in the proposed luggage area to identify the packaging and Ergonomics issues and suitable design corrective action is taken to ensure the actual luggage accommodation is protected inside the vehicle at concept phase. During concept stage, the initial luggage volume is decided based on the vehicle segment. Then the different user scenario is built and virtual luggage models representing the actual condition are evaluated in the initial luggage volume area. The modification is done as per the evaluation results and the luggage compartment dimensions are finalized in vehicle architecture. This paper describes the virtual ergonomic methodology developed based on actual luggage space requirements depending on the target population usage pattern and protecting the design space for luggage area in the concept phase of the vehicle design.
The interiors of nonflowering trees, such as pine and ginkgo, contain sapwood lined with straw-like conduits known as xylem that draw water up through a tree’s trunk and branches. Xylem conduits are interconnected via thin membranes that act as natural sieves, filtering out bubbles from water and sap.
This paper focuses on the analysis and evaluation of acoustical design criteria to produce a plausible 3D sound field solely via headrest with integrated loudspeakers at the driver/passenger seats in the car cabin. Existing audio systems in cars utilize several distributed loudspeakers to support passengers with sound. Such configurations suffer from individual 3D audio information at each position. Therefore, we present a convincing minimal setup focusing sound solely at the passenger’s ears. The design itself plays a critical role for the optimal reproduction and control of a sound field for a specific 3D audio application. Moreover, the design facilitates the 3D audio reproduction of common channel-based, scene-based, and object-based audio formats. In addition, 3D audio reproduction enables to represent warnings regarding monitoring of the vehicle status (e.g.: seat belts, direction indicator, open doors, luggage compartment) in spatial accordance. Furthermore, individual sound zones enable superior in-car communication between seats regardless of the current driving situation. An often overlooked topic is the acoustical privacy of in-car systems towards the exterior especially during telephony which is also tackled by the presented design as a by-product. We present how the structural shape, the assembly and alignment of the loudspeakers affects the frequency response, the effective sound pressure levels at the passenger’s ears, the inter-aural crosstalk, and the crosstalk to other seats. We further show that person affects the sound field by movements and therefore can change the overall performance. Finally, we present our approach for 3D audio reproduction for the car cabin schematically.
A laser 2-focus velocimeter(L2F) has been utilized for the measurements of the velocity and size of droplets in diesel fuel sprays injected from a 6-hole nozzle. The fuel was stored once in a common rail and was injected intermittently to the atmosphere by using a solenoid injector. The diameter of the nozzle orifice was 0.165 mm. The injection pressure was 60 MPa. The injector solenoid was driven by the current having a waveform consisted of 3 stages; boot, pull, and hold. The injection amounts were set at 0.8, 2.9, 3.9 and 4.7mg by changing the durations of the pull stage and the hold stage. The L2F measurement was conducted at 10 mm downstream from the nozzle exit. The fluctuation intensity of the droplet velocity was found to be larger under the smaller injection amount. It was clearly shown that the arithmetic mean droplet size under the smaller injection amount was smaller than that under the larger injection amount during the hold current duration. There was a negative correlation between the droplet size and the droplet velocity fluctuation intensity. It is considered that the turbulence inside the nozzle enhanced droplet breakup under the small amount injection, because a small needle valve opening caused vortex and cavitating flows inside the nozzle.
Reinforcing the Corvette's long association with astronauts, Chevrolet unveiled the convertible version of its all-new, mid-engine-layout 2020 Corvette Stingray in Cape Canaveral in early October. Executive chief engineer Tadge Juechter, underscoring the car's no-compromises performance and comparatively affordable price, called it a “no-lose proposition” for enthusiasts considering the new Corvette but also desiring a more open-top experience. When it goes into production in the first quarter of 2020, the Corvette Stingray convertible will start at $67,495 - $7,500 more than the 2020 Stingray coupe, which was widely celebrated for its aggressive $59,995 base price. Although called a convertible, there is no fabric to be seen: the 2020 Corvette Stingray convertible uses a folding-hardtop design in which the center roof section folds in two pieces and stores above the rear-mounted engine. From some angles the new Corvette convertible will be difficult to distinguish from the standard Stingray coupe, even with the roof open. The giveaway is the glass rear hatch on the coupe that exposes the engine to view. The convertible does without this glass cover, but uses an upright section of glass behind the driver flanked by pronounced buttresses. The bodywork covering the engine is solid, with a rear-opening section that more closely resembles a conventional trunk.
This SAE Recommended Practice provides a means to observe and evaluate a towed vehicle under a variety of road conditions to determine its behavior. The drivetrain should be evaluated by conducting SAE J1144.
This SAE Recommended Practice is designed to provide readily accessible paint and trim code information on all passenger vehicles, lightweight trucks, and vans in a way that minimizes the time and effort required to locate and effectively use that information for body repair, parts ordering, vehicle maintenance, and information systems.
Secure boot is a fundamental security primitive for establishing trust in computer systems. For real-time safety applications, the time taken to perform the boot measurement conflicts with the need for near instant availability. To speed up the boot measurement while establishing an acceptable degree of trust, we propose a dual-phase secure boot algorithm that balances the strong requirement for data tamper detection with the strong requirement for real-time availability. A probabilistic boot measurement is executed in the first phase to allow the system to be quickly booted. This is followed by a full boot measurement to verify the first-phase results and generate the new sampled space for the next boot cycle. The dual-phase approach allows the system to be operational within a fraction of the time needed for a full boot measurement while producing a high detection probability of data tampering. We propose two efficient schemes of the dual-phase approach along with calibratable parameters to achieve the desired tamper detection probability. We evaluate the tampering detection accuracy within a simulation environment. Then we build a real system to evaluate the real-time performance using an automotive embedded microcontroller with a built-in Hardware Security Module (HSM).
A comprehensive comparison between a direct acting and an indirect acting piezoelectric injector has been carried out both at the hydraulic rig and at the dynamometer cell. The working principle of these injector typologies is illustrated, and their hydraulic performance has been analyzed and discussed on the basis of experimental data collected at a hydraulic test rig. The injector characteristics, nozzle opening and closure delays, injector leakages, injected flow-rate profiles, injector-to-injector variability in the injected mass, injected volume fluctuations with the dwell time (DT), and minimum DT for fusion-free multiple injections have been compared in order to evaluate the impact of the injector driving system on the injection apparatus performance. The direct acting and indirect acting piezoelectric injectors have been installed on a Euro 5 diesel engine, which has been tested at a dynamometer cell. Optimized double and triple injection strategies have been considered at some representative key points of the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). Experimental data on engine-out emissions, brake-specific fuel consumption (bsfc), and combustion noise (CN) are presented and discussed with the support of a three-zone diesel combustion diagnostic model. The research has focused on the cause-and-effect relationships between hydraulic performance of the injectors and results of the engine tests. The main objective is to assess the possible differences in engine performance between the direct acting and indirect acting piezoelectric injector setups and to provide a clear evaluation of the benefits of the direct acting technology. In particular, the potential of the boot injection in direct acting injectors is assessed by comparison with engine results, which refer to efficient multiple injection schedules implemented on indirect acting piezoelectric injectors.
In this study, two types of drag reduction devices (a horizontal plate, and a vertical plate) are used to weaken the downwash of the upper flow and c-pillar vortex of the DrivAer notchback model driving at high speed (140 km/h). By analyzing and comparing 15 cases in total, the aerodynamic drag reduction mechanism can be used in the development of vehicles. First, various CFD simulation conditions of a baseline model were compared to determine the analysis condition that efficiently calculates the correct aerodynamic drag. The vertical plate and horizontal plate applied in the path of the c-pillar vortex and downwash suppressed vortex development and induced rapid dissipation. As a result, the application of a 50-mm wedge-shaped vertical plate to the trunk weakened the vortex and reduced the drag by 3.3% by preventing the side flow from entering the trunk top. The installation of a 150 mm horizontal plate at the trunk to decrease downwash reduced the drag by 5.1% by improving the bottom and side flow.
Hybrid test systems are gaining more and more significance in the aerospace industry. At the heart of these systems is a standardized communication infrastructure. There are many challenges when designing the communication infrastructure. For example, it requires very specific knowledge to boot a hybrid system, manage its configuration process, and start and stop the execution of applications, such as simulations, panels or recorders. Likewise, when testers use a heterogeneous test environment, they cannot commit themselves too much to every single test means and its special characteristics. Nevertheless, testers must always be able to monitor and control every test system. This means, they must be able to determine the current overall system status and the current status of its components and parts. Examples for this are hardware components, such as real-time processors and I/O boards, as well as software applications, such as real-time simulations models on the test system. Based on this, the user needs to be able to efficiently control the test bench and appropriately react to error situations. For the hybrid test system, this means that each of its modules must follow a common concept for status monitoring and control. Naturally, this is not the case as every supplier has their own specific methods and concepts for these tasks. The aim of this paper is to present concepts for hybrid test benches incorporating systems from different suppliers. These concepts are based on the idea of a communication infrastructure that supplies the standardized transport mechanism required for interoperability. As a first step, the requirements for cross-vendor status monitoring and control are analyzed with a particular emphasis on developing a common basis. Subsequently, a basic concept is presented for both status monitoring and control. The goal is to find mechanisms that can be used to establish a standard.
Vehicle Security means protecting potential threats, unintended malfunction and illegal tuning. In addition, it has become a more important issue on an automotive system as it is directly connected to the driver and pedestrian's life. Automotive industry significantly needs to enhance security policies to prevent attacks from hackers. Nevertheless, in some systems, performance still has to be considered at first when security functions are implemented. Especially, in case of Engine Management System (EMS), fast engine synchronization for starting should be considered as the first priority. This paper is intended to show an approach to design efficient secure boot implementation for EMS. At the beginning of this paper, the concept of secure boot is explained and several use cases are introduced according to execution modes, such as the foreground and background secure boot modes. As a next step, engine starting process by EMS is explained. The Fuel injection and ignition process after engine synchronization are then explained. Some severe issues happened in engine restart by EMS reset during engine running are discussed in detail. In any case, Engine should be stable. Even in restart case. This paper is suggesting efficient secure boot implementation strategies which focus on stable engine restart and re-synchronization. These strategies include task allocation in operation system, task split based on multiple cores, and memory allocation. This paper is a part of Hyundai Autron’s EMS project. The Infineon 32-bit, TriCore™ MCU, Aurix™ with embedded hardware security module (HSM) is used for timing measurement, with the concept of security refers to SHE+, Infineon security software package.
A new anthropomorphic test device (ATD) is being developed by the US Army to be responsive to vertical loading during a vehicle underbody blast event. To obtain design parameters for the new ATD, a series of non-injurious tests were conducted to derive biofidelity response corridors for the foot-ankle complex under vertical loading. Isolated post mortem human surrogate (PMHS) lower leg specimens were tested with and without military boot and in different initial foot-ankle positions. Instrumentation included a six-axis load cell at the proximal end, three-axis accelerometers at proximal and distal tibia, and calcaneus, and strain gages. Average proximal tibia axial forces for a neutral-positioned foot were about 2 kN for a 4 m/s test, 4 kN for 6 m/s test and 6 kN for an 8 m/s test. The force time-to-peak values were from 3 to 5 msec and calcaneus acceleration rise times were 2 to 8 msec. Compared to the neutral posture, the “off-axis” measures (e.g. shear and bending moment) were much greater in magnitude in plantar- or dorsi-flexed posture. The results as a function of velocity demonstrated uniform increases with increasing test velocities. The response corridors supplied from the present investigation will serve as initial design parameters for the ATD lower leg, and can also be used for validation for a human computational model.
Although its best-ever sales year was barely more than 50,000 units and many critics questioned the buying public's desire for a midsize pickup based on a unibody structure instead of the tried-and-true body-on-chassis layout, Honda remained faithful to the concept it introduced with the first-generation Ridgeline pickup, producing it for ten years from 2005-2014. Even through the recession and auto-industry downturn, Honda insisted it was keen to develop a second-generation Ridgeline, to continue to press the idea that if many in pickup-crazed America took an honest look at what they want from a pickup-and equally important, how they actually use a pickup-a unibody-based design would be the most satisfying choice.
Flow visualization techniques are widely used in aerodynamics to investigate the surface trace pattern. In this experimental investigation, the surface flow pattern over the rear end of a full-scale passenger car is studied using tufts. The movement of the tufts is recorded with a DSLR still camera, which continuously takes pictures. A novel and efficient tuft image processing algorithm has been developed to extract the tuft orientations in each image. This allows the extraction of the mean tuft angle and other such statistics. From the extracted tuft angles, streamline plots are created to identify points of interest, such as saddle points as well as separation and reattachment lines. Furthermore, the information about the tuft orientation in each time step allows studying steady and unsteady flow phenomena. Hence, the tuft image processing algorithm provides more detailed information about the surface flow than the traditional tuft method. The main advantages over other flow visualization methods, such as oil paint, is that experimental facilities are not contaminated and statistical data can be extracted. The investigated surface pattern shows a symmetric flow on the entire rear end section of the passenger car. The flow field on the roof, backlight, and upper trunk deck is attached almost everywhere. However, two small regions indicate the presence of two counter-rotating vortices at the lower edge of the backlight (rear window). Those vortices are also detectable in the distribution of the tuft angle standard deviation. A bifurcation line is present at each side of the trunk due to the streamwise vortices originating at the C-pillars. The tuft streamlines created with this novel tuft method are compared to a standard oil paint flow visualization to validate the calculated tuft flow pattern. A critical comparison between the methods confirms that the flow tuft analysis algorithm functions flawlessly as a highly detailed flow analysis tool without the mess of oil paint.
Numerical models of Hybrid III had been widely used to study the effect of underbody blast loading on lower extremities. These models had been primarily validated for automotive loading conditions of shorter magnitude in longer time span which are different than typical blast loading conditions of higher magnitude of shorter duration. Therefore, additional strain rate dependent material models were used to validate lower extremity of LSTC Hybrid III model for such loading conditions. Current study focuses on analyzing the mitigating effect of combat boots in injury responses with the help of validated LSTC Hybrid III model. Numerical simulations were run for various impactor speeds using validated LSTC Hybrid III model without any boot (bare foot) and with combat boot. Results from the current study show that the stiffness response of boot material plays a major role in validating the numerical model under such blast loading conditions which may lead to different biomechanical responses of Hybrid III as seen in automobile crashes. Therefore, it is worth of validating the model first in barefoot conditions and then, further incorporation of boot like structure to study their blast mitigation capabilities. Results from the current study will be used in studies for whole body model validation and further, providing the guidelines for future cadaveric setups.
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