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Tubular components are widely used in automotive axles and transmissions due to inherent advantage of quick development of these parts, consistency in production quality and low costs due to standardized process. The design and development of these tubular parts though underlines high investment in drawing dies. Any modification in these parts due to manufacturing constraints or some failures related to unexpected loadings are expensive and time consuming. Change in thickness may be required at only a particular location to take care of higher stresses, however, it cannot be provided considering limitation on manufacturing process. Thus, designing thickness accurately for these parts is a very important aspect of the design process. This paper demonstrates the use of FE Simulation for tubular rear axle to include the pre-stress effects of manufacturing process on the part during initial design phase. Simulation is carried out in 3-stages.

Many research groups are developing Human Body FE Models (FE-HBM) as a tool to be used in safety research. The FE-HBM's currently available are in certain fixed postures. Repositioning of model in alternate postures is needed for use in out of position (OOP) occupant simulations and different pedestrian posture simulations. Postural change in upper extremity can be split two processes, viz, repositioning of spinal vertebra and repositioning of the soft tissue associated with the spine. The objective of this study is to establish a methodology to regenerate pelvis flesh with change in spine/pelvis position. The outer profile of the pelvis flesh should ideally be parametrically described with respect to the associated hard tissues which is not the case in existing FE-HBM's. The affine invariant (Farin, 1990) property of cubic Bezier curves is used in this study.