Car Body Shapes Research Articles

An Exploratory Wind Tunnel Study of Air Jet Wheel Spoilers

Wheels and wheelhouses are a significant source of aerodynamic drag on passenger cars. The use of air jets, in the form of an air curtain, to smooth the airflow around front wheel housings on cars has become common practice, as it produces a small drag benefit. This paper reports an initial small-scale wind tunnel study of an air jet employed as an effective wheel spoiler to reduce the drag produced by the front wheels and wheel housings of passenger cars. For this investigation, the air jet was created using an external compressed-air supply and was applied to a highly simplified car body shape. The data presented suggest that the air jet has some potential as a drag-reduction device.

Designing Shell Eco Marathon Car Bodies with Solid Work

The Shell Eco Marathon is a world-class car competition for students. Through this competition, students compete to create innovation and creativity in the development of vehicle technology. The final result of this competition is the birth of vehicles that are economical, environmentally friendly, including a lightweight and aerodynamic body. This study aims to produce an urban concept car body design for racing purposes, with several provisions that comply with the Shell Eco Marathon competition regulations, have a low drag coefficient and turbulence value. This research includes research and development (R&D), using the ADDIE development model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation). The test object is the 3D urban concept body shape design. The development of the urban concept body design uses the Solid work 2018 software with a flow simulation feature to analyze 3D urban concept body shape designs. The results of this research and development are (1) the design of the car body shape has met the competition regulations, (2) the drag coefficient value can be achieved at 0.1965, and (3) the value of turbulence intensity can be achieved at 0.133%. The results showed that the development of the urban concept body shape design was as planned.

A Simplified Description Method for Color Appearance Depending on the Car Body Shape

A Simplified Description Method for Color Appearance Depending on the Car Body Shape

Modelling of dynamic loads during series operation for optimisation of part holder design

Energy and resource efficiency today are fundamental challenges in production technology, which also arise in the production of sheet metal body parts when using state-of-the-art press technology. Since sheet metal forming processes are becoming more and more complex due to modern design of car body shape, the tools for producing body parts are increasing in size and modern press technology is developing correspondingly faster. Simultaneously, produced tools for new car models must withstand applied process related loads emerging during lead time of model to ensure a robust production process. Based on the increase in productivity supported by servo press technology of today and resulting higher demands on required tool strength, part holders assembled in large line dies in particular belong to critical tool components. In this paper, an optimization concept for part holder design is presented. Higher acceleration of press ram and upper tool results into higher levels of dynamic impacts, which can lead to critical load cases originating from spatial mass distribution of part holder. Occurring loads are reduced by use of damping elements. The distribution of damping elements into part holder structures is optimised according to the mass distribution of the part holder and the design of the upper die. For this purpose, dynamic effects of the tool were modelled based on analytical models and verified by multi-body simulations and corresponding stress calculations. The application of dynamic load characteristics of tool components thereby allow realistic modelling of distributed mass and force effects. Finally, simulation results were validated on the basis of tests under series production conditions.

Shape optimisation method based on the surrogate models in the parallel asynchronous environment

This paper proposes a new optimisation method, the Parallel Asynchronous Surrogate Model (PASM) method, which is based on the surrogate models approximation and takes advantage of the asynchronous, parallel processing threads. Additionally, it introduces the Cornering technique (PASM+C), which by using values from the corners of the design space provides a rapid drop of the value of the objective function and a significant reduction of the processing time.An overview and characteristics of the main reference optimisation methods, like Particle Swarm Optimisation PSO and Genetic Algorithm (GA), is presented, together with the results of the computer experiments involving optimisation of the generic car body shape. Significant attention is devoted to the time and computational effort needed for drag minimization by using different optimisation schemes.Finally, the benefits and limitations of the proposed methods are discussed together with their potential impact on the optimisation process workflow.

A method for simulating the appearance of new colours on various car body shapes

<b>A method for simulating the appearance of new colours </b><b>on various car body shapes</b>

Principles of car body digitisation based on geometry extracted from views in 2D drawing documentation

Application of the computer aided design (CAD) systems reduced duration of innovation cycle in the area of new motorcar development from 8-10 years in the past to 4-6 years presently. Another consequence of the CAD implementation is a fact that some of simpler modifications of the car body shapes, i.e., the so-called facelifts, are applied already two or three years after the beginning of a new model production. With regard to a fact that the motorcar is a result of mutual cooperation between the designer and constructor, the designer's ideas are impressed into the modelling material (clay) or they are presented on paper in the form of sketches. The next step is already up to technicians, i.e., they have to transform these ideas into the real 3D data fields in order to prepare tools for the production of the individual motorcar parts. This paper describes an example of exact modelling according to the drawing documentation.

Employ the Taguchi Method to Optimize BPNN’s Architectures in Car Body Design System

Previous research works tried to optimize the architectures of Back Propagation Neural Netwo rks (BPNN) in order to enhance their performance. However, the using of appropriate method to perform this task still needs expanding knowledge. The paper studies the effect and the benefit of using Taguchi method to optimize the architecture o f BPNN car body design system. The paper started with literatures review to define factors and level of BPNN parameters for number of hidden layer, nu mber of neurons, learn ing algorithm, and etc. Then the BPNN arch itecture is optimized by Taguchi method with Mean Square Error (MSE) indicator. The Signal to No ise (S/N) ratio, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and analysis of means (ANOM) have been employed to identify the Taguchi results. The optimal BPNN training has been used successfully to tackle uncertain of h idden layer's parameters structure. It has faster iterations to reach the convergent condition and it has ten times better MSE achievement than NN machine expert. The paper still shows how to use the informat ion of car body shapes, car speed, vibration, noise, and fuel consumption of the car body database in BPNN training and validation.

Representation of Car Body Shape using Standard Car Model and GUI Development for Car Body Shape Synthesis

Representation of Car Body Shape using Standard Car Model and GUI Development for Car Body Shape Synthesis

New high speed imaging CMM system aids car production

PurposeTo describe a new vision‐based co‐ordinate measuring machine (CMM) developed in France by ActiCM, which has undergone successful trials with car maker Renault.Design/methodology/approachThe vision‐based CMM uses intelligent vision devices (IVDs) which are mounted on a robot arm. Each IVD has two high‐definition CCD cameras, a visible LED illumination source and a white light projector. Up to eight sensors can work simultaneously on the same part which the IVDs' cameras can image from two different and known positions. These two views are then geometrically manipulated by the device software using photogrammetry to extract 3D data.FindingsTrials at a Renault car production plant have shown that the system can validate a car's body shape in significantly less time than is possible with conventional CMMs. The time for a 2,000‐element validation has been reduced from around 10 to 2 h, with a dimensional accuracy of 300 μm.Originality/valueThis illustrates that vision‐based CMMs are able to reduce dramatically the time taken to validate a car's body shape whilst maintaining the same accuracy as conventional CMMs.

New high speed imaging CMM system aids car production

Purpose – To describe a new vision‐based co‐ordinate measuring machine (CMM) developed in France by ActiCM, which has undergone successful trials with car maker Renault.Design/methodology/approach – The vision‐based CMM uses intelligent vision devices (IVDs) which are mounted on a robot arm. Each IVD has two high‐definition CCD cameras, a visible LED illumination source and a white light projector. Up to eight sensors can work simultaneously on the same part which the IVDs' cameras can image from two different and known positions. These two views are then geometrically manipulated by the device software using photogrammetry to extract 3D data.Findings – Trials at a Renault car production plant have shown that the system can validate a car's body shape in significantly less time than is possible with conventional CMMs. The time for a 2,000‐element validation has been reduced from around 10 to 2 h, with a dimensional accuracy of 300 μm.Originality/value – This illustrates that vision‐based CMMs are able to ...

A shape controled fitting method for Bézier curves

The problem of controling a shape when fitting a curve to a set of digitized data points by proceeding to a least squares approximation is considered. A nonlinear method of solving this problem, dedicated to the obtention of planar curves with a smooth and monotonous variation of curvature is introduced. This method uses particular Bézier curves, called typical curves, whose control polygon is partially constrained in order to provide the desired curve shape. The curve fitting principle is based on variations of the tangent direction at the ends of the curve. These variations are controled by the displacement of a given curve point. An automatic procedure using this method to get a curve close to a set of data points has been implemented. An application to car body shape design and a comparison with the least squares approximation method is presented and discussed.

Semiotics and marketing New directions in industrial design applications

A flexible discipline with a wide range of applications, the scope of the semiological analysis is here discussed first as a ‘global’ tool to assist in marketing communication decision, product choice decision, or in communication strategy planning, whether industrial, advertising or media. The aspect of intercultural marketing communications is also briefly examined. One application of this discipline discussed in detail is that of industrial design. Particular examples taken from the field of car design illustrate how the semiotician can use models derived from Gestalt psychology, linguistics and semantics to analyse car body shapes, chiefly in terms of legibility and expressivity. This research can be undertaken during product development, during test marketing or at any other phase of the product's existence.