PSI - Issue 38

Denis Chojnacki et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 38 (2022) 362–371 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2021) 000 – 000

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2. How to ensure Mechanical Reliability? 2.1. Why MPF based on RLDA? Automotive carmakers have to satisfy some regulations to ensure Safety Products. With European directive 2001/95 CE & 2007/46 CE: Regulatory requires that only SAFE PRODUCT can be provided to the market. Therefore, each carmaker has a guideline based on a General Product Safety Policy. This includes: - Our ambition for the Safety of our Products, - Our design choices, - The methods we use for design and validations A general Product Safety Requirements is also established with some requirements: “We guarantee our customers Safe Products appropriate for each market in which we are present” “ We apply design Methods based on Principles and demonstrations of the control of safe functioning in all Product’s Life situations” Therefore, we won’t find some standards to satisfy with the appropriate requirements , for example specific Pothole Profile and speed condition, to make a safe design. Nevertheless, with these high-level requirements, i t’s the responsibility of a carmaker to prove that he has the complete knowledge of his customers by leading MPF campaign based on RLDA. The MPF methodology described in this paper is used at Stellantis (ex PSA Groupe) for more than 25 years (Bignonet and Thomas (2001), Thomas et al. (1999)). 2 major reasons are the rootcause for a new MPF campaign: - A new business country for our brands to qualify; - A new product with some specific customer use cases as for Pick-Up or new powertrain (Hybrid car) that can induce some local modifications of the test schedule even with the same driver Profile. 2.2. Which deliverables expected with MPF based on RLDA? As illustrated Fig. 2 the target to cover with RLDA campaigns is the normal Use and some Misuse Levels (incidental) but not accidental solicitations. These 3 levels of solicitations will be the rootcause of our specifications.

Fig. 2. 4-Levels Schematic description of the loading based on simplified mechanical behavior

Deterministic approach: Based only on Maxi and incidental events measured during RLDA, the design process must ensure that the structure sustain those levels of loading without failure. To guaranty safety in worst-case scenario, the designed structure is generally oversized for the general case scenario.