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The heavy duty NV4500 manual transmission is designed for a torque capacity of 610 N-m, 10% more than the standard duty version. A larger diameter mainshaft and matching overdrive gear, a larger diameter input shaft and a strengthened case were required to provide the higher torque capacity. Input and output splines and a speedometer drive gear were designed to meet customer requirements. A customer-required shift lever for this transmission was made compatible with the standard duty version. A two-wheel drive extension and a four wheel drive transfer case adapter were also developed to customer requirements.

The NV 4500 manual transmission was designed to provide durability and versatility along with low shift efforts and quiet operation. This paper describes the process used to design and develop a transmission to meet specific system and durability requirements. The optimization of gears, bearings, and other components are discussed using Duty Cycles, Finite Element Analysis, and Design of Experiments. The shift and lubrication system designs are described as well as methods of noise reduction.

The stiffness of an automobile body panel is significant to structural performance as well as customer perception. Body panel stiffness can be predicted with limited accuracy using spherical shell theory, empirical methods and linear elastic finite element codes. This paper describes a study to confirm that body panel stiffness can be accurately predicted by non-linear finite element analysis. Specifically, the stiffnesses of two sets of 8 simple bispherically curved test panels with curvature and thickness differences were experimentally measured and correlated to ABAQUS non-linear finite element plots. It was concluded that increased accuracy in body panel stiffness predictions can be obtained with non-linear finite element analysis techniques.