Chassis Capabilities

In the past 5 years, since Arvin Industries and Meritor Automotive merged, ArvinMeritor’s chassis systems group has revolutionized automotive engineering and design with the creation of chassis systems capabilities and an impressive array of advanced products.

Through a structured development approach and a solid vision of system integration, ArvinMeritor applies industry-leading capabilities, such as benchmarking, vehicle chassis optimization toolkit, bi-directional flow bench and chassis hardware in the loop systems to optimize its suspension systems. 

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is an integral starting point in the development and design process at ArvinMeritor. Performance of new and existing products are thoroughly tested and evaluated. Results are then analyzed and products are reconfigured for optimal performance and utmost cost-efficiency. 

Vehicle chassis optimization toolkit

The vehicle chassis optimization toolkit is ArvinMeritor’s dynamics development DOE knowledge database containing all types of suspension geometry. With each suspension configuration the component location can be changed to analyze the effects on the vehicle. This toolkit combines capabilities of ADAMs simulation, design of experiments and database technology to optimize existing and proposed system and vehicle-level geometries. 

Bi-directional flow bench

The bi-directional flow bench is a tool used to understand the behavior of standard dampers and develop control logic for advanced damping systems. It provides the ability to characterize damper behavior without cumbersome take-apart shock absorbers. It is an invaluable tool that provides a means to characterize a damper for use in vehicle dynamics models, and plans are in place to provide hardware in the loop development in the near future. The portability of this unit makes it a useful development tool for on site, customer development at the track.