Function-Oriented Material Design for Next-Generation Ground Vehicles

Author(s):  
Zheng-Dong Ma ◽  
Hui Wang ◽  
Noboru Kikuchi ◽  
Christophe Pierre ◽  
Basavaraju Raju

A systematic approach, referred to as function-oriented material design (FOMD), is presented in this paper, which can be used to design materials for the specific tasks demanded of structures in future ground vehicle systems. In order to carry out the FOMD process, first the functions of a structure in the vehicle system need to be explicitly defined in a systematic way. Then these functions must be quantified, so as to define the objective and constraint functions in the optimization process. Finally, an advanced optimization process needs to be carried out, and the material layout has to be finalized by the design engineer. Typically a number of constraints, such as manufacturing and cost constraints, need to be considered in the optimal material design process. A major objective of this research is to outline these constraints, as well as to find ways to ameliorate the optimization process to produce improved, cost-effective, and manufacturable engineered materials.

Author(s):  
Vlad Florea ◽  
Vishrut Shah ◽  
Stephen Roper ◽  
Garrett Vierhout ◽  
Il Yong Kim

Over the past decade there has been an increasing demand for light-weight components for the automotive and aerospace industries. This has led to significant advancement in Topology Optimization methods, especially in developing new algorithms which can consider multi-material design. While Multi-Material Topology Optimization (MMTO) can be used to determine the optimum material layout and choice for a given engineering design problem, it fails to consider practical manufacturing constraints. One such constraint is the practical joining of multi-component designs. In this paper, a new method will be proposed for simultaneously performing MMTO and Joint Topology Optimization (JTO). This algorithm will use a serial approach to loop through the MMTO and JTO phases to obtain a truly optimum design which considers both aspects. A case study is performed on an automotive ladder frame chassis component as a proof of concept for the proposed approach. Two loops of the proposed process resulted in a reduction of components and in the number of joints used between them. This translates into a tangible improvement in the manufacturability of the MMTO design. Ultimately, being able to consider additional manufacturing constraints in the Topology Optimization process can greatly benefit research and development efforts. A better design is reached with fewer iterations, thus driving down engineering costs. Topology Optimization can help in determining a cost effective and efficient design which address existing structural design challenges.


Author(s):  
Christian Wetzel ◽  
Carsten Proppe

The influence of wind loads on the driving behavior of ground vehicles is an important economical, safety, and comfort issue. The crosswind performance is of great interest, as violent lateral winds can cause major accidents or will at least make the driver and the passengers feel very uncomfortable and insecure. In this paper, a sampling based methodology for the analysis of stochastic ground vehicle systems is presented. Starting from the well known Monte Carlo method more sophisticated reliability methods with higher efficiency are introduced and their advantages and drawbacks are critically reviewed. Furthermore, probabilistic sensitivity analyses are presented, which can be used to quantify the importance of the random variables on the response of the vehicle system. The influence of the parameters of the probability density functions is investigated by means of a novel response surface method. The mentioned approach is applied to a nonlinear road vehicle model under strong crosswind excitation for which the failure probabilities and the sensitivities are computed.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1773
Author(s):  
Weichen Wei ◽  
Bijan Shirinzadeh ◽  
Rohan Nowell ◽  
Mohammadali Ghafarian ◽  
Mohamed M. A. Ammar ◽  
...  

Solid-State LiDAR (SSL) takes an increasing share of the LiDAR market. Compared with traditional spinning LiDAR, SSLs are more compact, energy-efficient and cost-effective. Generally, the current study of SSL mapping is limited to adapting existing SLAM algorithms to an SSL sensor. However, compared with spinning LiDARs, SSLs are different in terms of their irregular scan patterns and limited FOV. Directly applying existing SLAM approaches on them often increase the instability of a mapping process. This study proposes a systematic design, which consists of a dual-LiDAR mapping system and a three DOF interpolated six DOF odometry. For dual-LiDAR mapping, this work uses a 2D LiDAR to enhance a 3D SSL performance on a ground vehicle platform. The proposed system takes a 2D LiDAR to preprocess the scanning field into a number of feature sections according to the curvatures on the 2D fraction. Subsequently, this section information is passed to 3D SSL for direction feature selection. Additionally, this work proposes an odometry interpolation method which uses both LiDARs to generate two separated odometries. The proposed odometry interpolation method selectively determines the appropriate odometry information to update the system state under challenging conditions. Experiments are conducted in different scenarios. The results proves that the proposed approach is able to utilise 12 times more corner features from the environment than the comparied method, thus results in a demonstrable improvement in its absolute position error.


2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Gunter ◽  
Michael D. Letherwood

Abstract The US Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) has the mission of procuring and managing the US Army’s fleet of wheeled and tracked vehicles. TACOM’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) provides engineering and scientific support directed at maximizing the capability of all Department of Defense (DOD) ground vehicle systems and ensuring the safety of their personnel. In order to reduce the time required to deploy troops and equipment, engineers and scientists at TARDEC have been investigating modifications to ground vehicles that lead to overall increases in performance, especially in the areas of off-road mobility, and on-road stability and handling. This paper describes an effort to assess the dynamic performance of a track laying (tracked) Recovery Vehicle towing a disabled tracked vehicle whose weight is approximately equal to that of the Recovery Vehicle. Specifically, this paper will describe techniques employed to develop a 3-dimensional dynamic model of the vehicle combination, and apply the model to evaluate towing performance of the recovery vehicle. It also describes measures aimed at minimizing incidences of jackknifing when braking on downhill slopes, as well as vehicle design modifications that were modeled and simulated in efforts to reduce the combination’s jackknife vulnerability. These modifications included tow bar schemes that locked-out inter-vehicle yaw, and external surge brakes mounted on the towed vehicle. Techniques used to model and simulate the tractive effort available to the Recovery Vehicle on varied soil types are described as are analyses used to determine the combination’s ability to climb grades. Vehicle modifications aimed at increasing the tractive effort available, such as tow bar pitch orientation and track shoe geometry changes are also described.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Gao ◽  
Mi Xiao ◽  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Liang Gao

AbstractTopology Optimization (TO) is a powerful numerical technique to determine the optimal material layout in a design domain, which has accepted considerable developments in recent years. The classic Finite Element Method (FEM) is applied to compute the unknown structural responses in TO. However, several numerical deficiencies of the FEM significantly influence the effectiveness and efficiency of TO. In order to eliminate the negative influence of the FEM on TO, IsoGeometric Analysis (IGA) has become a promising alternative due to its unique feature that the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) model and Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) model can be unified into a same mathematical model. In the paper, the main intention is to provide a comprehensive overview for the developments of Isogeometric Topology Optimization (ITO) in methods and applications. Finally, some prospects for the developments of ITO in the future are also presented.


1989 ◽  
Vol 33 (18) ◽  
pp. 1192-1196
Author(s):  
Ellen C. Haas

To date, testing and evaluation of whole-body vibration in ground vehicle systems have not always fully utilized appropriate experimental design methodology, applicable statistical tests, or relevant criteria. A test design and evaluation methodology was developed to eliminate these oversights. This methodology uses inferential statistics, questionnaires, and a comparison of vibration data with representative mission scenarios. The methodology was employed in the evaluation of two alternative tracked ground vehicle designs. The independent variables were track type, terrain, vehicle speed, and crew position. The dependent variables were International Standards Organization (ISO) 2631 whole-body vibration exposure limit times at the lateral, transverse, and vertical axes. Two different multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) performed on the exposure limit data indicated that all main effects, as well as several interactions, were significant (p < .01). A comparison of exposure limits to a representative mission scenario indicated that both track types would exceed ISO 2631 exposure, comfort, and fatigue limits during expected travel over cross-country terrain. Crew questionnaires also indicated crew discomfort when exposed to this type of terrain. The experiment demonstrated that the procedure was useful in helping to determine the extent that vehicle vibration permits the performance of the vehicle mission, within limits dictated by safety, efficiency, and comfort.


2018 ◽  
Vol 06 (04) ◽  
pp. 251-266
Author(s):  
Phillip J. Durst ◽  
Christopher T. Goodin ◽  
Cindy L. Bethel ◽  
Derek T. Anderson ◽  
Daniel W. Carruth ◽  
...  

Path planning plays an integral role in mission planning for ground vehicle operations in urban areas. Determining the optimum path through an urban area is a well-understood problem for traditional ground vehicles; however, in the case of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), additional factors must be considered. For an autonomous UGV, perception algorithms rather than platform mobility will be the limiting factor in operational capabilities. For this study, perception was incorporated into the path planning process by associating sensor error costs with traveling through nodes within an urban road network. Three common perception sensors were used for this study: GPS, LIDAR, and IMU. Multiple set aggregation operators were used to blend the sensor error costs into a single cost, and the effects of choice of aggregation operator on the chosen path were observed. To provide a robust path planning ability, a fuzzy route planning algorithm was developed using membership functions and fuzzy rules to allow for qualitative route planning in the case of generalized UGV performance. The fuzzy membership functions were then applied to several paths through the urban area to determine what sensors were optimized in each path to provide a measure of the UGV’s performance capabilities. The research presented in this paper shows the impacts that sensing/perception has on ground vehicle route planning by demonstrating a fuzzy route planning algorithm constructed by using a robust rule set that quantifies these impacts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Shehab Uddin ◽  
Fazlur Rashid

Abstract The slant angle plays a crucial role in the flow property of hatchback ground vehicles. An optimum slant angle is obligatory for better handling the ground vehicles when fitted with a rear wing. In this regard, the variation of time-averaged flow properties around a wing-attached hatchback ground vehicle (Ahmed body) due to a variable slant angle is accessed by this paper. The design includes a scaled Ahmed body as a reference ground vehicle and a rear wing with NACA 0018 profile. The computational studies are executed with Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes based k-epsilon turbulence model with nonequilibrium wall function. The vehicle's model is scaled to 75% of the actual model, and analyses are conducted with Reynolds number 2.7 × 106. After the study, it is observed that a 15 deg slant angle is the critical angle for the wing attached state in which the drag coefficient is maximum. After this angle, a sudden reduction of coefficients is observed, where 25 deg is critical for without wing condition. Besides this, the two counter-rotating horseshoe vortices in the separation bubble and side edge c-pillar vortices also behave differently due to the wing's presence. The turbulent kinetic energy variation and the variation in coefficients of surface pressure are also affected by the rear wing attachment. This paper will assist in finding the optimum slant angle for hatchback ground vehicles in the presence of a rear wing. Thus the study will help in increasing stability and control for hatchback ground vehicles.


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