Is Finite Element Analysis on your radar for projects you plan to develop during 2019? If not, it should be.
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is an engineering technique used to obtain “approximate solutions of boundary value problems.” By running the specs of your prototype through FEA software, technicians are able to determine strengths, weaknesses, and potential refinements.
Since the initial establishment of CAFE standards in the 1970s, periodic changes have been instituted to accommodate for growth, industry changes, and new information. As with most changes, each announcement has been met with a wide variety of reactions, from sharp criticism to fawning praise. The government’s most recent announcement has been no exception to this.
Are CAFE standards rising or falling? If we know one thing about American policy and lawmaking, it’s that nothing stays static forever. Over the past centuries of our country’s history, we’ve enacted laws, rolled them back, and reenacted new ones in their places. This is the shape of progress: sometimes we must take a step back in order to take new steps forward.
It is certainly easy to see how tube hydroforming has transformed certain aspects of the automotive industry. At least, it is easy to see if you know what tube hydroforming is.
Most private citizens are unaware that current CAFE standards exist, let alone what they mean and how they impact our society. That doesn’t mean that the average person remains unaffected by them, though.
Before we get to specifics, however, let’s consider what CAFE standards actually are and what they’re intended to accomplish.
Those who work outside very specific industries, such as the hydroforming or automotive industries, probably do not give much thought to current CAFE standards. In fact, many of them might not even be familiar with the term. Nevertheless, CAFE standards do impact their lives in specific ways.
CAFE Standards Help Save Money All Around. Much has been written in recent days about the state of the U.S. economy. While we are certainly not a poor nation, if we compare ourselves now to ourselves in days gone by, we’re not doing as well as we have in the past.
According to Financial Times, although things are picking up, the economy continues to under perform.
[Gross] domestic product is sluggish, productivity growth is down and, though wages are ticking up, incomes have hardly budged.But our situation is not hopeless.
In a world where more and more emphasis is being placed on leaving fewer carbon footprints, fuel economy has become an important issue for auto manufacturers across the country. Not only are auto manufacturers attempting to meet the demands of more environment-conscious consumers, they are also trying to avoid paying large sums of money for stiff penalties by complying with Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards.
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards regulate the fuel economy of vehicles sold in the United States. Rather than requiring minimum fuel efficiency standards for each vehicle, CAFE requires that each manufacturer’s average fuel economy meet certain requirements.
CAFE Standards:
The Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE) standard enacted in 2014 imposes fuel efficiency and green house gas emission standards on the manufacturers of cars and medium and heavy-duty trucks. These standards get progressively stricter every year, with costly fines imposed for every car or truck model that fails to meet them. Cars must improve performance by 37% and trucks by 23% every year.
Generally speaking, automakers have been beating the CAFE standard every year. It’s in the interests of the manufacturers to build lighter and more efficient vehicles while maintaining high safety standards. How do the manufacturers manage to do that? The goals are achieved by improving engine and transmission technologies, body aerodynamics that reduce air resistance at high speeds, tires with lower rolling resistance, and very importantly parts that reduce weight.
Weight reducing manufacturing technologies:
A typical example of the benefit of hydroforming is cited by Professor Muammer Ko, of the Virginia Commonwealth University. Prof. Koe talked about an aluminum radiator support for a passenger car.
The hydroforming process can produce structurally stiff and stable parts out of materials that are lighter in weight but able to replace stamped parts made with heavier materials.
Although stamping and welding have not gone away, increasing proportions of the automotive production has gone to hydroforming.
American Hydroformers engineers and manufactures tube hydroformed parts for the automotive industry out of Midwestern facility. Please contact us for more information.
