Title: Axiomatic Design of the Check Link for an Automotive Side Closure System
text: In the automotive industry, a lot of attention has been paid to the effort required for opening/closing the doors, and for a good reason. The door closing and opening effort creates an impression in the customer’s mind about the engineering and quality of the vehicle even before he or she enters it. Although this seems trivial compared to the complexity of the rest of the automobile, effective engineering of the door opening/closing effort is challenging due to the interaction of several design parameters. Some of the best practices focus on satisfying targets for the energy required shutting the door from a small open position (around 10 degrees). However this practice ignores the complete closing/opening motion of the door from a full open position. In this paper Axiomatic Design principles were used to obtain a better understanding of the door opening/closing motion from a full open position, in terms of the functional requirements (FR), and how these requirements are satisfied by the various design parameters (DP) of the door closure system. In this paper we present an analysis of the opening/closing efforts of the side door closure system using this Axiomatic Design approach, and a discussion on the design of the check-link. The complete opening/closing motion is a result of the interaction of the different components of the door closing system, such as the latch, weather seal, energy loss due to air-binding effect, the inclination of the hinge axes, and the check-link. FR/DP decomposition of the Door System is presented. This provides the framework for creative design solutions.