Browse Topic: Manufacturing
Opening a tailgate can cause rain that has settled on its surfaces to run off onto the customer or into the rear loadspace, causing annoyance. Relatively small adjustments to tailgate seals and encapsulation can effectively mitigate these effects. However, these failure modes tend to be discovered relatively late in the design process as they, to date, need a representative physical system to test – including ensuring that any materials used on the surface flow paths elicit the same liquid flow behaviours (i.e. contact angles and velocity) as would be seen on the production vehicle surfaces. In this work we describe the development and validation of an early-stage simulation approach using a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code (PreonLab). This includes its calibration against fundamental experiments to provide models for the flow of water over automotive surfaces and their subsequent application to a tailgate system simulation which includes fully detailed surrounding vehicle geometry
Image-based machine learning (ML) methods are increasingly transforming the field of materials science, offering powerful tools for automatic analysis of microstructures and failure mechanisms. This paper provides an overview of the latest advancements in ML techniques applied to materials microstructure and failure analysis, with a particular focus on the automatic detection of porosity and oxide defects and microstructure features such as dendritic arms and eutectic phase in aluminum casting. By leveraging image-based data, such as metallographic and fractographic images, ML models can identify patterns that are difficult to detect through conventional methods. The integration of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and advanced image processing algorithms not only accelerates the analysis process but also improves accuracy by reducing subjectivity in interpretation. Key studies and applications are further reviewed to highlight the benefits, challenges, and future directions of
To obtain real-time tire wear status during vehicle operation, this paper proposes a tire wear detection method based on signal analysis. Firstly, PVDF piezoelectric thin film sensors are pasted in the center of the airtight layer of tires with different degrees of wear to collect tire stress data under different working conditions. Secondly, filter and extract the time-domain and frequency-domain feature information of the collected data to construct a feature dataset. Finally, a deep regression model is established to train the feature dataset and achieve real-time detection of tire damage status. The results indicate that the prediction algorithm based on signal analysis and feature extraction achieves a maximum error of 0.3mm in tire wear detection, demonstrating high accuracy in tire wear detection. Providing tire information for safe driving of vehicles has high industrial application value.
To promote the electric performance and safety of development for EV mobility, optimization methodology and design guide of high voltage bolted joint should be newly developed. This paper describes the development process of multi-physics (electrical, mechanical, thermal) FEA methodology, various experimental tests and establishment of optimization methodology of busbar bolted joint design in terms of bolt preload validation and joint temperature rise. The various key factors on high voltage joint tightening are quantitatively studied by utilizing this optimized methodology.
High-efficiency manufacturing involves the transmission of copious amounts of data, exemplified both by trends in the automotive industry and advances in technology. In the automotive industry, products have been growing increasingly complex, owing to multiple SKUs, global supply chains and the involvement of many tier 2 / Just-In Time (JIT) suppliers. On top of that, recalls and incidents in recent years have made it important for OEMs to be able to track down affected vehicles based on their components. All of this has increased the need for OEMs to be able to collect and analyze component data. The advent of Industry 4.0 and IoT has provided manufacturing with the ability to efficiently collect and store large amounts of data, lining up with the needs of manufacturing-based industries. However, while the needs to collect data have been met, corporations now find themselves facing the need to make sense of the data to provide the insights they need, and the data is often unstructured
Battery cell aging and loss of capacity are some of the many challenges facing the widespread implementation of electrification in mobility. One of the factors contributing to cell aging is the dissimilarities of individual cells connected in a module. This paper reports the results of several aging experiments using a mini-module consisting of seven 5 Ah 21700 lithium-ion battery cells connected in parallel. The aging cycle comprised a constant current-constant voltage charge cycle at a 0.7C C-rate, followed by a 0.2C constant current discharge, spanning the useful voltage range from minimum to maximum according to the cell manufacturer. Charge and discharge events were separated by one-hour rest periods and were repeated for four weeks. Weekly reference performance tests were executed to measure static capacity, pulse power capability and resistance at different states of charge. All diagnostics were normalized with respect to their starting numbers to achieve a percentage change
The initial powder used for the manufacturing of NdFeB permanent magnets is usually prepared through rapid cooling, either by melt spinning or strip casting. The powders produced by these two methods are suitable for different applications: while melt-spun powder is a good initial material for bonded and hot-deformed magnets, strip-cast powder is normally used for sintered magnets. To investigate the suitability of using strip-cast powder to manufacture hot-deformed magnets, NdFeB powder prepared by strip casting was hot pressed (without particle alignment) and compared with melt-spun powder prepared under the same conditions (700 °C, 45 MPa, 90 min). Although the processing parameters are the same (pressed in the same mold), the magnetic properties of the magnets made from the two powders are significantly different. Surprisingly, the magnet made from the strip-cast powder (after ball milling) shows comparable magnetic properties to those of isotropic magnets, with coercivity (HcJ) of
Door sunshade in a vehicle has proven to be very comfortable and luxurious feature to the customers. Luxury vehicles provide power sunshade which is electrically operated with the activation of a switch, whereas cost conscious vehicles provide manual sunshade which requires manual coiling and uncoiling. This study is to develop a door panel structure that can accommodate both the manual sunshade and power sunshade, thereby serving both cost conscious as well as luxury seeking customers. Manual sunshade consists only of cassette, pull bar, spindle mechanism and hooks whereas the power sunshade consists of cassette, pull bar, spindle mechanism, flap mechanism, bowden cable mechanism, actuator and motor. Due to this difference in package, it becomes difficult to accommodate both variants of sunshade into the same body system. However, this study helps in developing a common body structure by ways of effective packaging, modifying the cable and actuator mechanism and critical packaging of
Parts in automotive exhaust assembly are joined to each other using welding process. When the exhaust is subjected to dynamic loads, most of these weld joints experience high stresses. Hence it should be ensured that the exhaust assembly is designed to meet the requirements of exhaust durability for the estimated life of the vehicle. We also know that all parts used in manufacturing of exhaust system have inherent variations with respect to sheet metal thickness, dimensions and shape. Some parts like flex coupling and isolators have high variations in their stiffness based on their material and manufacturing processes. This all leads to a big challenge to ensure that the exhaust system meets the durability targets on a vehicle manufactured with all these variations. This works aims to evaluate the statistical spread in weld life of an exhaust with respect to inherent variations of its components. For the purpose of variational analysis, a Design of Experiments (DOE) is done where
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