Ford has an extensive history of developing and utilizing smart and innovative materials in its vehicles. In this paper, we present new challenges the automotive industry is facing and explore how intelligent uses of smart materials can help provide solutions. We explore which vehicle attributes may provide most advantageous for the use smart materials, and discuss how smart material have had technical challenges that limit their use. We also look at how smart materials such as gecko inspired adhesion is providing opportunities during the vehicle assembly process by improving manufacturing quality, environmental sustainability, and worker safety. An emerging area for deployment of smart materials may involve autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions, where customer expectations are migrating toward a seamless and adaptive experience leading to new expectations for an enhanced journey. Another area where smart materials are influencing change is interior and exterior design including smart textiles, photochromatic dyes, and thermochromatic materials. The key to advancing smart materials in automotive industry is to capitalize on the smaller niche applications where there will be an advantage over traditional methods. Ford has an extensive history of developing and utilizing smart and innovative materials. Magnetorheological fluids, thermoelectric materials, piezoelectric actuators, and shape memory alloys are all in production. In this paper we present new challenges the automotive industry is facing and explore how intelligent uses of smart materials can help provide solutions. We explore which vehicle attributes may provide most advantageous for the use smart materials, and discuss how smart materials have had technical challenges that limit their use. An emerging area for deployment of smart materials may involve autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions, where customer expectations may require a seamless and adaptive experience for users having various expectations.
KEYWORDS: Fluid dynamics, Magnetism, Particles, Data modeling, Mathematical modeling, Finite element methods, Performance modeling, Safety, Systems modeling, Control systems
Many efforts to understand the response of magnetorheological (MR) fluid dampers have been undertaken in the past several years. Such components are of great interest for use in automotive suspension and safety systems, as well as in aerospace and civil applications. Physically sensible models that contain realistic descriptions of fluid flow would be of great utility in optimizing the performance of these dampers. While simple models based on the familiar Bingham plastic MR fluid constitutive relation capture many of the key features of the steady-state damper response, including the existence of a magnetic-field-dependent 'yield force' and the reduction of the damping coefficient at high velocities, such models do not describe the more complex velocity dependence and dynamic response of the force observed in real dampers. Unfortunately, experimental data on viscometric flows of MR fluids at the high shear rates encountered in MR dampers are scarce. Moreover, a number of sophisticated damper models are available, but many use mathematical constructs that are not easily understood in terms of physical phenomena. Motivated by these challenges, we have measured the response of two automotive MR shock absorbers and developed a lumped-parameter model to describe their dynamic response. Using the parameters provided by this model, we have also compared the measured damper response with that predicted by simple models of magnetic flux and fluid flow in these components.
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