• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.137-145
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• 2002

Electric vehicle body has to be subjected to uniform load and requires auxiliary equipment such as air pipe and electric wire pipe. Especially, the cross beam supports the weight of passenger and electrical equipments. a lightweight vehicle body is salutary to save operating costs and fuel consumption. Therefore this study is to perform the size and the shape optimization of crossbeam for electric vehicle using the method of topology optimization to introduce the concept of homogenization based on optimality criteria method which is efficient for the problem having the number of design variables and a few boundary condition. this provides the method to determine the optimum position and shape of circular hole in the cross beam and then can achieve the optimal design to reduce weight.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2002.10b
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• pp.876-883
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• 2002

Electric vehicle body has to be subjected to uniform load and requires auxiliary equipment such as air pipe and electric wire pipe. Especially, the cross beam supports the weight of passenger and electrical equipments. a lightweight vehicle body is salutary to save operating costs and fuel consumption. Therefore this study is to perform the size and the shape optimization of crossbeam fur electric vehicle using the method of topology optimization to introduce the concept of homogenization based on optimality criteria method which is efficient for the problem having the number of design variables and a few boundary condition. this provides the method to determine the optimum position and shape of circular hole in the cross beam and then can achieve the optimal design to reduce weight.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.492-501
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• 2017

A 900 W scale direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) stack is designed and fabricated for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. To meet the volume and weight requirements, metallic bipolar plates are applied to the DMFC stack for the first time wherein POS470FC was chosen as bipolar plate material. To ensure good robustness of the metallic bipolar plate based DMFC stack, finite element method based simulations are conducted using a commercial ANSYS Fluent software. The stress buildup and deformation characteristics on bipolar plates and end plates are analyzed in details. The present DMFC stack exhibits the performance of 1,130 W at 32 V and 35.3 A, clearly demonstrating that it could successfully operate for UAVs requiring around 1,000 W of power.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.1015-1019
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• 2013

To improve the energy efficiency and ride quality of an electric vehicle, it is highly desirable to develop a lightweight suspension system with high travel ratio. Air suspension systems with a rubber tube are often considered optimal for such requirements. In this study, a new lightweight air suspension system with high travel ratio was developed for use in electric vehicles. Furthermore, an FE-based multi-flexible-body dynamics (MFBD) model of the suspension system was developed as a tool for improving the design of an actual suspension system. The MFBD model includes the FE modeling of the rubber tube module as well as other essential parts of the air suspension system. The system parameters for the model were obtained from various experiments. The validity of the developed MFBD model was shown through a comparison between the experimental results and the simulation results.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.243-249
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• 2012

A lightweight 200W direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) stack is designed and fabricated to power a small scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The DMFC stack consists of 33-cells in which membrane-electrode assemblies (MEAs) having an active area of 88 $cm^2$ are sandwiched with lightweight composite bipolar plates. The total stack weight is around 3.485 kg and stack performance is tested under various methanol feed concentrations. The DMFC stack delivers a maximum power of 248 W at 13.2 V and $71.3^{\circ}C$ under methanol feed concentration of 1.2 M. In addition, the voltage of individual cell in the 33-cell stack is measured at various current levels to ensure the stability of DMFC stack operations. The cell voltage distribution data exhibit the maximum cell voltage deviation of 28 mV at 15 A and hence the uniformity of cell voltages is acceptable. These results clearly demonstrate that DMFC technology becomes a potential candidate for small-scale UAV applications.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.25-30
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• 2018

Recently The automotive industry is trying to increase the energy efficiency by reducing the weight of the car body and engine components as a way to achieve high energy efficiency. In particular, the reduction of the weight of the vehicle through the weight reduction of the vehicle body has the advantage that the fuel consumption and the output can be improved. But at the same time, there is the disadvantage that the strength becomes weak due to the reduction of the material thickness. Therefore, in order to overcome these disadvantages, materials with high strength according to the unit thickness have been actively developed, and researches for applying them have also been increasing. In this study, we will investigate the application of cold rolled steel sheet, which is a lightweight material, to a horn bracket that secures a installed in an automobile engine room. The horn bracket secures the horn on the car engine and is bolted to the outer wall of the engine. The momentum is acted on the bracket due to the distance between the bolt fastening part and the car horn installed on the bracket end side. Therefore, the body part of the bracket is more likely to be destroyed by the influence of the continuous stress. In this paper, design optimization for weight reduction and strength enhancement was performed to solve this problem, and possibility of applying the rolled steel sheet material as lightweight material by tensile test and fabrication was confirmed.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.629-636
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• 2007

This paper describes the process of analyzing vehicle stiffness in terms of frequency band in order to improve vehicle handling. Vehicle handling and ride comfort are highly related to the systems such as suspension, seat, steering, and the car body design. In existing analytical processes, the resonance frequency of a car body is designed to be greater than 25 Hz in order to increase the stiffness of the body against idle vibration. This paper introduces a method for using a band with a frequency lower than 20 Hz to analyze how stiffness affects vehicle handling. Accordingly, static stiffness analysis of a 1g cornering force was conducted to minimize the deformation of vehicle components derived from a load on parts attached to the suspension. In addition, this technology is capable of achieving better performance than older technology. Analysis of how body attachment stiffness affects the dynamic stiffness of a bushing in the attachment parts of the suspension is expected to lead to improvements with respect to vehicle handling and road noise. The process of developing a car body with a high degree of stiffness, which was accomplished in the preliminary stage of this study, confirms the possibility of improving the stability performance and of designing a lightweight prototype car. These improvements can reduce the time needed to develop better vehicles.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.568-575
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• 2015

A hand-made vehicle with a formula (VF-1) was designed and manufactured with the aim of realizing a lightweight and high-performance vehicle. The driver's body weight and stiffness of the frame were considered. The vehicle was equipped with a one-cylinder Exiv 250 engine with intake manifold potting for realizing weight reduction, high performance, and low cost. The suspension system for the formula was designed through the analyses and tests of vehicle motion and equipment. In a steering system, anti-Ackerman geometry was introduced to increase the transverse force during cornering. A full electric paddle shift system was adopted to decrease the braking distance. For protection against the distortion and warping of the frame, tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding technology was used.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.10
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• pp.1031-1037
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• 2010

This paper proposed lightweight aluminum bipolar plates as an alternative for conventional graphite bipolar plates in fuel cell systems used as a power source for small reconnaissance UAVs. Since bipolar plates occupy more than 80% of the total weight of the fuel cell system, lightweight aluminum bipolar plates can improve the overall payload and flight time of the fuel cell UAV. The aluminum and graphite bipolar plates were fabricated to compare the performance of each of them. A 15% higher performance per weight was obtained from aluminum bipolar plates than the graphite bipolar plates. Also, the performance of a single cell using aluminum bipolar plates was evaluated under various operating conditions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.155-160
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• 2003

For the weight reduction of vehicle body up to 20∼30% compared to the conventional monocoque steel body·.in-white, most automotive manufacturers have attempted to develop the aluminum intensive body-in-white using an aluminum space frame. In this paper, the crush tests and simulations for the aluminum extrusions filled with the structural from are performed to evaluate the collapse characteristics of that light weighted material. From these studies. the effectiveness of structural for is evaluated in improving automotive crashworthiness. In order to improve the improve energy absorption capability of the aluminum space frame body, safety design modifications are performed and analyzed based on the suggested collapse initiator concepts and on the application of the aluminum extrusions filled with structural foam. The effectiveness of these design concepts on the frontal and side impact characteristics of the aluminum intensive vehicle structure is investigated and summarized.