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Safety aspect has been a key requirement in designing braking system. However, non-safety aspect like NVH and thermal performance are gaining equal importance. High engine capacity (cc) motorcycles are prone to thermal and NVH issues as braking energies are more. Therefore, virtual validation of brake disc system by considering both dynamic and thermal load with predefined assumptions is a toughest challenge when confronted with reality boundary conditions. Thus, the paper comes in a unique way of coupling dynamic and thermal load executed between multi body dynamics (MBD) and heat transfer equation which will convey results closer to real time scenario. MBD solves motion and the dynamic influence on heat transfer is calculated using “sliding boundary condition”. A series of repeated braking condition are performed on front brake disc of motorcycle. The results obtained from the analysis shows critical temperature rise.

With advancements in powertrain technologies & light weighting of vehicle structures, the average driving speeds of motorcycles are increasing. This makes it important to safeguard the vehicle structure from possible impact loads or crash events. The front suspension of a motorcycle typically consists of telescopic front fork which acts as a structural member as well. Thus modern vehicle front forks should be designed keeping in mind frontal impacts as well. Which means the structural stiffness of front fork needs to be optimally designed so that during impacts, the structure should deflect absorbing the bulk of the impact energy safeguarding the rest of the vehicle structure including chassis. At the same time the front fork should not break. The popular design improvement techniques like increasing section modulus, heat treatments to increase strength may or may not have positive effect on impact strength.

This paper describes application of Design of Experiments (DOE) technique and optimization for mass reduction of a Sports utility vehicle (SUV) body in white (BIW). Thickness of the body panels is taken as design variable for the study. The BIW global torsion, bending and front end modes are key indicators of the stiffness and mass of the structure. By considering the global modes the structural strength of the vehicle also gets accounted, since the vehicle is subjected to bending and twisting moments during proving ground test. The DOE is setup in a virtual environment and the results for different configurations are obtained through simulations. The results obtained from the DOE exercise are used to check the sensitivity of the panels. The panels are selected for mass reduction based on the analysis of the results. This final configuration is further evaluated for determining the stiffness and strength of the BIW.