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The door closing effort is one of the first impressions to customer's mind about the engineering and quality of the vehicle. The door closing force and the minimum door closing speed are two important characteristics for evaluation. But we can obtain these two indices only by experiments and/or subjective assessments. To predict the door closing effort by the simulation method during the design phase, a finite element analysis model is established. The compression load deflection behavior of seals is converted to the parameters of constitutive model of seals by the parameters identification method. Then, the seal resistance force and the minimum door closing speed are calculated. The later correlates very well with the experiment data.

Rubber bushing is an important connection component in vehicle suspensions. It plays an important role in vehicle performance. In the past years, the theories of rubber have been studied, and several forms of the strain energy potential, incompressible or almost incompressible, have been developed. But not all of these models are suitable for all kinds of applications. Therefore, when investigating the rubber bushing, it is necessary to find the effective constitutive equations. Two bushings with different shapes are studied. One is an ax-symmetric uniform bushing. The other one has additional two longitudinal holes. A process of parameter identification is conducted. The axial stiffness and radial stiffness of the bushing are tested and used as objectives. The parameters of constitutive equations are defined as design variables. The nonlinear analysis software ABAQUS and a multi-disciplinary optimization software OPTIMUS are used.