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The performance of autonomous vehicle (AV) sensors, such as lidars or cameras, is often hindered during rain. Rain droplets on the AV sensors can cause beam attenuation and backscattering, which in turn causes inaccurate sensor readings and misjudgment by AV algorithms. Most AV systems are equipped with cleaning systems to remove contaminants, such as rain, from AV sensors. One such mechanism is to blow high-speed air over the AV sensors. However, the cleaning air can be hindered by incoming headwind, especially at higher vehicle speeds. An innovative idea proposed here is to use a visor to improve the cleaning performance of AV cleaning systems at higher vehicle speeds. The effectiveness of a baseline visor design was studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) air flow analysis and Lagrangian rain droplet tracking. The baseline visor improved the AV sensor cleaning performance in two ways. First, the visor protects the cleaning air flow from being disturbed by headwind.

The on-board charger and DC/DC undertake the power conversion function between AC charging of new energy vehicles and low-voltage power supply of the vehicle, which are indispensable parts of the vehicle system. With the rapid development of electric vehicle industry, the current automotive industry has more and more stringent requirements on power system. Lightweight and high power density are more and more important for OEMs. With the increasing popularity of electric vehicles, how to reduce the cost has become one of the most important indicators for OEMs. In the traditional on-board power supply, the on-board charger and DC/DC are mostly combined as independent parts in the vehicle system. In order to meet the integration requirements of OEMs, the on-board charger and DC/DC are even put on a PCB board or only in a shell, so as to achieve the so-called "integration" requirements.

BOBC (Bi-directional on-board charger) is a power conversion system component for AC charging and discharging of new energy vehicles. It has two working modes: AC charging mode and AC discharge mode. In the two working modes, the BOBC belongs to both the controller and the actuator. In some extreme cases such as communication and control failure of the AC charging mode, new energy vehicles have the risk of high-voltage battery overcharging and overheating, which will lead to high-voltage battery fire or even explosion. In the AC discharge mode, it involves the actual operation of the users on electricity, and the risk of short circuit and open circuit may happen in the process, which endangers the safety of the users. Based on the risks brought by the two working modes, it should pay more attention to the safety of the BOBC.

Patterns and locations of spot-welds and adhesive bonds strongly affect the structural performance of vehicle bodies. In this paper, a rigorous method for designing optimal patterns of spot-welds and adhesive bonds is presented. This method is based on concepts from topology optimization of structures. An adjoint method is used for determining gradients, and a convex approximation method is used for optimization. The method is simple to use and has been applied successfully to realistic automotive component design; it is furthermore robust and efficient to be applied to large-scale automotive structures.