ESDU Automotive Collection

Solving Complex Automotive Engineering Problems

The ESDU Automotive Collection contains a group of independently validated design methods, best practices, data and software tools for solving complex Automotive Engineering problems and enabling faster and more reliable decision making during vehicle product design. The ESDU Automotive Collection is structured to complement your internal design practices, addresses gaps in information and provides access to best in class industry expertise.

Meeting New Efficiency Standards

As automotive OEMs strive to meet the higher fuel efficiency standards, extensive research and development efforts will be required during new automotive product design programmes. The proven ESDU design methods are widely used in aircraft and aerospace design and many of the tools and data can be used equally powerfully to speed up the design process while assuring the reliability and integrity of the new vehicle designs. Reducing the weight of body, frame and engine components should translate to fuel economy improvements. It seems inevitable that lightweight materials with better strength and stiffness to weight ratios, such as composites, aluminum, titanium and magnesium alloys, will be more widely adopted in automotive designs, but often the knowledge, tools and data required to design with these different materials are not readily available. Data Items within ESDU such as those in the section on Design for Minimum Weight (Section 3) and the ESDU validated Metallic Material Data Handbook (MMDH) provide the design methods and resources required for designing vehicles with light-weight materials.

Applications

Optimizing the flow of fuel and air into the engine, turbocharging, supercharging and increasing engine speeds can be potential methods to improve fuel efficiency. As maximum engine speed or torque increases and component sections decrease, fatigue from rotational and vibrational stresses becomes an increasing concern during design. ESDU's Fatigue - Endurance Data and Fracture Mechanics Series will provide automotive design engineers with a solid foundation of validated design methods and data to handle these problems.

Reliability

The information available in the ESDU Automotive Collection complements the highly conservative design and operating standards and codes used in the automotive industry. The ESDU validated methodologies provide a reliable source of engineering knowledge for design within the targets set by the International standards and codes. These methodologies are based on experimental data, analytical methods and computational techniques, such as CFD and FEA, and represent the industry best practices and validated design methods.
Download the ESDU Automotive Collection Brochure

The ESDU Automotive Collection includes documents from:

  • Composites
  • Fatigue - Endurance Data
  • Fatigue - Fracture Mechanics
  • Stress and Strength
  • Structures
  • Vibration and Acoustic Fatigue

Also included are these materials databases:

MMDH - Metallic Materials Data Handbook

  • Validated metallic materials properties database.
  • Design engineers can spend a great deal of time rigorously developing models, analyzing structures and simulating product performance and good reliable design data is critical to the design process. The design engineer faces an ever-increasing demand for products with a performance that must be substantiated under stringent conditions of cost and environment. If invalid material property data are utilized, then valuable engineering time will be wasted. If the error is detected early during development or testing, then the design and structures will have to be reanalyzed with validated data and new prototypes built and tested. In the worst case, field failures could result in costly corrective actions such as scrapping of raw materials, alternative materials selection, new supplier identification and approval, product redesign or retooling of production lines.
  • The output or results of structural design or finite element method (FEM) models are only as good as the design input data, which include physical or material properties. After the design is verified with prototyping and testing or virtual simulations, the design can be optimized by assessing alternative part geometries or new material selections from the MMDH materials database in the validated model and/or through additional prototyping and testing.

MMPDS

  • Metallic Materials Properties Development and Standardization Handbook.
  • The primary purpose of this Handbook is to provide a source of statistically based design values for commonly used metallic materials and joints. Additionally, other mechanical and physical properties needed for the design of structures are included. The material properties and joint data used to derive values published in this Handbook were obtained from tests conducted by material and fastener producers, government agencies, and members of the airframe industry. The data submitted to MMPDS are reviewed and analyzed per the methods detailed in this Handbook. Results of these analyses are submitted to the membership during coordination meetings and if determined to meet the documented standards set they are published in this Handbook.