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New demands for the European Market claimed a new medium duty truck. Aim was not only to comply with new legislations, but also achieve better driving comfort and dynamic characteristics. The development of a new cab suspension was the answer given by means of an international project executed by the Technology Development Center of Mercedes-Benz do Brasil (CDT) with support of other technical divisions of our Development Center in Germany. High-level Teamwork Brazil/Germany at all levels from project coordination down to the plant assembly line was the key to reach an outstanding result with an extra achievement of weight reduction. Complete integration of all involved collaborators in Brazil and in Germany proved to be the main reason to get at the high efficiency shown during the development tasks. This article presents a brief overview of the undertaken development steps together with the challenges and the solutions given to assure the success of the international teamwork.

During SAE BRASIL/96 a paper was presented showing that it was possible to represent the influence of the coefficient of friction in the stamping process using numerical simulation and some results were shown where it became clear that the correct definition of the friction conditions is very important for the results reliability. It was also shown that the current practice of assuming a typical value for the coefficient of friction, independent of the lubrication conditions, can lead to imprecise results. Along the drawing operation, the blank contacts different regions of the die and for each region there are different contact conditions (contact pressure, sliding velocity, etc.). These differences can lead to friction conditions where the coefficient depends on the contact variables and the Coulomb friction model is not applicable.