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As revealed from J. D. Power surveys, today most vehicle owners consider perceived quality as a direct indicator of the vehicle build quality and durability. [5] The problem has become more prominent and noticeable in recent times, due to the desire for reduced cost, reduced weight targets, aesthetic demands, and crash requirements. The performance of the door assembly when subjected to an abuse load of sag and over opening is one such perceived quality indicator which gives the customer the first impression about the engineering and build quality of the vehicle. Door hinge inclination and hinge contact flushness tolerance are the major design parameters affecting this performance. Although these are an important design parameter, the precise quantification of the effect of these design parameters on door performance under abuse loading has remained somewhat elusive.

Safety and Comfort are the core requirements of the automotive seating systems. Number of the occupants, determines type of the seating system requirement. The second row seat often needs to fold and slide, to allow the passenger to enter inside the car. Folding second row seat will also allow accommodating larger length cargo. The over folding of seat is controlled by hard stop mechanism. The hard stop mechanism generally consists of the seat arm stopper at back seat and hard stop located at base of the seat. These stoppers will limit the further motion of back seat. The folding speed of back seat is governed by various factors e.g. adjacent seat foam/structure friction, location, structural mass of seat etc. The scope of the paper is to evaluate various folding speeds of the back seat. Its effects are evaluated for the stresses and fatigue life of the hard stop components.

In Automotive world, different types of shield are used to safe guard the assembly from dirt and dust. These can deteriorate the performance and functioning of systems. Typically the dirt shields are not load carrying members, so preferred to have low gauges and low weight. Dirt shield has to cover many subassemblies, so it has intricate shape as well. Due to low gauge and complicated shape, the manufacturing of these shields becomes challenging in terms of maintaining assembly tolerances. In order to overcome these concerns, concurrent design approach is used. Using this approach manufacturing process of the parts is virtually simulated and residual stresses, strains, permanent set, spring back effect are evaluated. These results are cascaded to assembly load analysis, and results are monitored for deflections.