Erin is a Bus and Heavy Truck expert with more than 30 years of engineering experience in product design and development of heavy trucks, motor homes, buses, and passenger cars.
Erin worked at Chrysler for ten years in a variety of engineering roles including Structures Engineer, Lead Engineer, and Customer Satisfaction Team Engineer. As a member of the minivan group, her focus included structures, vehicle impact, resident engineering, and Hybrid system integration.
Prior to joining Chrysler, Erin spent nearly a decade in engineering positions in the bus industry. She has direct experience with many of the largest bus manufacturers, including BlueBird, Thomas, Spartan Chassis and US Bus; during this time Erin was involved in body, chassis, brakes, structure, and interior design.
In addition to her experience designing and engineering buses and passenger cars, Erin also has 14 years in truck design and development, 12 years at Freightliner and 2 years at Marmon. In these positions she was involved in nearly every system of the vehicle including body, cab access, vehicle durability, sleeper design, clutch and shift controls, cooling, chassis, drive train application, battery mounting, restraints, vehicle application, aerodynamics, and steering systems. During this time she also was trained in driving heavy trucks.
Erin is a Mechanical Engineer, a registered Professional Engineer, and holds a patent for Energy Absorbing Front Frame Structures. She enjoys exploring the back country and working on her Jeeps.
- Curriculum Vitae (CV)
- Truck Fires - Expert Analysis of Tractor Trailer Fuel Tanks
Truck fuel tanks look and function about the same now as they did 50 years ago. Aside for a modification that eliminated fuel lines from hanging at the lowest part of the vehicle, not much else has been modified.
In this article, vehicle engineer, Erin Shipp, P.E. takes a critical look at the design of modern heavy-truck fuel tanks and offers a safer alternative to reduce the liklihood of fuel-fed fires in trucking crashes.
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- Heavy Truck Crash Reconstruction - Expert Introduction
Most automobile crash reconstructions are performed using the Conservation of Inertia (COI) method. This method is acceptable and appropriate for similarly sized vehicles; however, as the difference in mass between the colliding vehicles grows (such as heavy truck-automobile collisions), the COI method becomes increasingly sensitive to uncertainties in impact and departure angles. Using the Conservation of Energy (COE) method may be more reliable in heavy truck-automobile crashes as it does not depend on the angles of impact and departure.
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- Trailer Collapse - Expert Tests Structure with Cardboard Analog
Throughout her career in design and development, Vehicle Engineer Erin Shipp, P.E. has used simple cardboard analogs to understand structures and how they fail. When she was retained for a case involving a Semi-Trailer that collapsed under the load of a forklift, she used a cardboard analog to simulate the failure.
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