• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.51-57
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• 2006

The contact pressure distribution between a rubber wiper blade and a glass windshield is a major factor for wiping performance. A modeling and simulation method has been developed to forecast the contact pressure distribution on a wiper blade. For modeling multi-body dynamics of an wiper linkage system and flexible nature of wiper blade, ADAMS and ADAMS/flex are employed. A simulation study has been also conducted to obtain contact pressure distribution. Comparison between simulation and measurement is provided to ensure fidelity of the model and the simulation method.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.83-90
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• 2010

The windshield wiper consists of 4 parts: a blade, an arm, a linkage and a motor. The wiper blade makes contact with the windshield and is designed to be operated normally at an angle of 30~50 degrees to the front glass. If the contact pressure between the wiper blade and windshield surface is too high, noise and wear of the rubber will result. On the other hand, if the contact pressure is too low, the performance will do badly, since foreign substances such as dust and stains will not be removed well. The pressure and friction of the wiper blade has a great influence on its effectiveness in cleaning the front window. This is due to the contact of the rubber with the window. This paper presents the dynamic analysis method to estimate the performance of the flat type blade of the wiper system. The blade has a nonlinear characteristic since the rubber is an incompressible hyper-elastic and visco-elastic material. Thus, Structural dynamic analysis using a complex contact model for the blade is performed to find the characteristics of the blade. The flexible multi-body dynamic model is verified by the comparison between test and analysis result. Also, the optimization using the central composite design table is performed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.134-140
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• 2003

The film sensor is used for measuring pressure distribution at planar area, especially at a small space or gap. The present paper deals with the development of film type sensors and system for pressure distribution measuring. The developed system is consist of (1)film sensor with 40/sup */40 array, (2)PCI interface card with maximum sampling rate of 100㎐, and (3)software for data processing and real-time display. The contact pressure test of wiper blade and front glass of vehicle was performed with wiper blade by 40cm. Generally spring force of wiper arm is designed at 0.7∼1kN. Test results of total force was 9.4N and 7.1N in each driver and passenger toward. The paper suggested possibility for base definition in wiper design. A windshield wiper blade experiment revealed that the system successfully measured the contact force distribution during static state, showing the usefulness of the developed system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.79-83
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• 2010

Recently, the flat wiper which is one piece wiper and subjected to a pressing force at a single center point is gaining wide applications on automotive windshields. However, nonuniform reactive pressure distributions takes place, so that wiping is not completed at such locations. The wiping performance of the flat wiper is best when a wiper and a curved windshield have perfect contact without gaps under the specified pressing force of 13 ~ 15 gf/cm. Therefore, it is necessary that the realistic curvature equation of a wiper spring-rail should be obtained. Finite element analysis, CATIA script-macro function, and the least square method were utilized to find out the curvature of a spring-rail for a perfect contact with a windshield under a specified concentrated load. The curvature equation became the third order polynomial.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.465-472
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• 2008

An automotive windshield wiper system is modeled mainly for vibration analysis purpose. The model is composed of solid links, ideal joints, imperfect joints to simulate unavoidable manufacturing defects and bushings having stiffness, contact between a wiper blade and a wind screen glass, friction, a spring and an actuator. Main stream of wiper dynamics analysis has been obtaining a closed form of system of equations using Newton's or Lagrange's formula and doing a numerical simulation study to understand and predict the behavior of it. However, the modeling process is complex since a wiper system is of multibody and a contact problem occurs. When imperfection, such as dead zone of a joint and stiffness of a rubber bushing, should be included, the added complexity makes the modeling difficult. Since the imperfection is understood as main cause of problematic vibration, the dynamics model of a wiper system aiming vibration analysis should include such unavoidable manufacturing defects in the model. An open form of dynamic model of a automotive windshield wiper system with imperfect joints using a commercial software is obtained and a simulation analyssis is conducted for vibration reduction study.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.292-298
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• 2015

A wiper is a safety device removing rain and debris from windshield and ensuring visibility of drivers. If contact pressure distribution between rubber of the blade and the windshield is unbalanced, unwanted noise, vibration, and abrasion of the blade can occur and sometimes fatal accidents could occur. To improve the safety of the wiper, there have been many researches on the contact pressure analysis of the wiper, but the analysis results were not converged or require much computational time due to material nonlinearity of the rubber and contact conditions between the blade rubber and the windshield. In this research, a simple model with 1D beam and 2D shell elements was used for the contact pressure analysis instead of the 3D blade model. The simplified model saved computational time of the analysis and resolved convergence problems. The accuracy of the analysis results was verified by comparing them with experimental results for different rail spring curvatures.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.974-984
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• 2012

This research introduces a new method to attenuate flip-over vibration generation in the flat blade windshield wiper by adjusting the contact pressure between the windshield glass and the blade. The knocking force in the flip-over action of the blade is decreased by inducing gradual tilting-over along the rubber strip of the blade. This gradual tilting-over is induced by introducing a non-uniform contact pressure distribution between the blade and windshield glass. The contact pressure distribution is adjusted by controlling the unloaded profile of the body spring in the blade using a procedure proposed in a previous study. Two blades, one blade designed to generate a uniform pressure distribution and the other designed to generate non-uniform pressure distribution, are developed using the procedure. Contact pressure distributions of the developed blades are measured using a special device and compared with the intended distributions confirming the similarities between the two groups. Vertical and lateral vibrations of the two blades are measured under realistic operating condition simulated by a wiper test rig. The vertical vibrations of the blade with non-uniform contact pressure are substantially smaller than corresponding vibrations of the blade with uniform contact pressure over the entire rubber strip.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.7
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• pp.837-842
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• 2010

The wiper system of a vehicle is important because it wipes the windshield, thereby enabling drivers to see through the windshield even under conditions of rain and snow. The blade is the key component of the wiper system because it wipes the windshield. When wiper-arm spring causes the blade to be pressed on the windshield optimum performance of wiping can be achieved when appropriate contact pressure is maintained. In this study, a dynamic analysis of the wiper system is carried out. A three-dimensional finite-element model of the wiper system is generated using SAMCEF, a commercial structural dynamic analysis program. The distribution of the contact pressure of the blade in its dynamic state is calculated. The simulation result is compared to the experiment result. Using the results of this study, the contact pressure of the blade can be estimated.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.55-62
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• 2013

An analytical procedure to determine a proper profile of the spring rail that generates intended contact pressure distribution in the flat wiper blade is introduced. The flat wiper blade is one piece blade and subjected to pressing force at a center point. In this type of blade, contact pressure distribution in the tip of rubber strip is determined by the pressing force, the initial profile of the blade before contact and bending stiffness of the blade. Experimentally obtained bending stiffness of the blade assembly is almost identical to that of the spring rail. Principle of reciprocity has been used to define the initial profile of spring rail from the deformed profile that is assumed to be identical to the windshield glass profile. The procedure has been verified experimentally by measuring the contact pressure of the blade assembled with the spring rail designed by the procedure proposed here. Measured contact pressure distributions of the blades show good agreements with intended distributions over the entire blade span. Consequently, it can be concluded that proposed procedure has relatively good accuracy in developing the spring rail for flat blade having a specific contact pressure distribution.