DESIGNING OF A MATLAB APPLICATION TO SPEED UP THE GOLDEN PASS TEST SELECTION IN DURABILITY ANALYSIS OF VEHICLES

The aim of this thesis is to drastically change the method adopted for the selection of the Golden Pass test among several performed during the durability analysis of a vehicle in the STELLANTIS group. The Golden Pass is characterized as the test closer, fatigue wise, to the solicitations a vehicle would undergo in a period of its life; the test is then replicated in a more efficient way on the proving benches. In the durability analysis department of STELLANTIS, the fatigue prediction method which is commonly adopted is the level crossing one, which compromises the accuracy in prediction with the ease of reading the results. In the company, the Golden Pass test is manually selected after a punctual analysis of each level crossing graph concerning every accelerometer present on a test car, depicting the most accurate one. This process besides being extremely time consuming is prone to major errors that could arise due to poor graphical resolution of a graph or to the human error and distraction. The employment of a MATLAB script would both greatly accelerate the process and avoid minor errors that could arise otherwise; at the same time graphs will be produced by the script as well so that in case of doubts on the obtained results the technician can promptly analyze a single channel’s graph and check if any mistake is present without going through the entire channels’ database. The application is designed to produce a summary table depicting the Golden Pass test on an objective scale using marks in order to produce a more intuitive to read and easier to share result across the company.