MECHANICS IN AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING

Mechanics plays a key role in automotive design, development and utilization. The requirements of safety, energy efficiency, and environment protection for modern vehicles involve all disciplines of mechanics. This paper briefly introduces the history of vehicles development and its basic structure and performances. The state of the art of the vehicle mechanics is described with emphasis on the key problems in tire mechanics, vehicle directional stability, crashworthiness, and noise and vibration. The vehicles mechanics problems in the future are summarized.