Thomas R. Kurfess

Automotive engineering curriculum development: case study for Clemson University

The automotive manufacturing industry has transitioned in the past 20xa0years from a central technical focus to an integrated and globally distributed supply chain. As car makers outsource not only a greater portion of their manufacturing, but also their technical design responsibility, a more thorough understanding of both design and manufacturing changes’ effect on total vehicle and total production system performance and cost is critical. The distribution of technical responsibility in automotive manufacturing has motivated the development of a specific curriculum in Automotive Engineering at Clemson University in South Carolina, USA, with core focus on the interaction between systems, both in design and manufacturing. In this development, a detailed survey of automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers and major suppliers was carried out. The differences in perceived need between these organization types is explored, and the incorporation of these perceived needs to a new Automotive Engineering curriculum is presented.

Organizational learning in automotive manufacturing: a strategic choice

This manuscript surveys the changes that affected the automotive industry in recent years with the evolution of industrial focus on globalization forces. Further, it proposes organizational learning as a viable strategy for the automotive industry, to effectively embrace and be agile to the continually changing environment. First, the manuscript characterizes and surveys the impact of globalization (global markets and competitors) on the current automotive industry in three categories: challenges in new markets, challenges in mature markets, and challenges in customer demands and hence sales trends. Second, the traditional strategies implemented in the automobile industry such as the “Company” and “Plant” specific production systems are presented. Lastly, the manuscript supports its proposal through case examples from Original Equipment Manufacturers the Rover group and Volvo AB.

Volumetric Flank Wear Characterization for Titanium Milling Insert Tools

Machining wear models are useful for the prediction of tool life and the estimation of machining productivity. Existing wear models relate the cutting parameters of feed, speed, and depth of cut to tool wear. The tool wear is often reported as changes in flank width or crater depth. However, these one-dimensional wear measurements do not fully characterize the tool condition when tools wear by other types of wear such as notching, chipping, and adhesion. This is especially true when machining difficult-to-machine materials such as titanium. This paper proposes another approach for characterizing tool wear. It is based on taking measurements of the retained volume of the cutting tool. The new wear characterization approach is used to demonstrate the progression of volumetric wear in titanium milling.Copyright

Notice of Retraction Influence of parameter variations for system identification of pitch-heave car model

The pitch-heave car model is used extensively in the system identification of a vehicle suspension system to capture the realistic dynamics of a suspension system. Influence of parameter variations on pitch-heave car model was analyzed in two aspects. The first part is on the root locus which shows the sensitivity of different parameters. The second part is on frequency domain. The magnitude and phase of the transfer function between output (sprung mass vertical acceleration, pitch rate and front tire vertical acceleration) and front road input changed as parameters changed. System identification of the pitch-heave car model using Matlab was done.

Design of a flexible centring tooling system

Precise machining of bearing rings is integral to finished bearing assembly quality. The output accuracy of centre-based machining systems relates directly to the precision of part centring before machining. Traditional tooling is subject to wear, dimensional inaccuracy and human error. A flexible tooling system for initial part centring is proposed based on a single measurement system and actuator. In this system, the part is rotated and measured to identify centre of geometry offset from centre of rotation, then moved by a series of pushes to align the centres. The actuation algorithm is self-modifying based on residual error. This tooling control architecture is based on a real-time version of LabVIEW and employs only a single fixed pusher tip. This enables the system to be readily adaptable to a range of part sizes with only internal variable changes. Such a flexible tooling system can be readily integrated into existing manufacturing equipment.