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Hard panel types of invisible passenger-side airbag (IPAB) door system must be designed with a weakened area such that the airbag will deploy through the Instrument Panel (IP) in the intended manner, with no flying debris at any required operating temperature. At the same time, there must be no cracking or sharp edges in the head impact test (ECE 21.01). If the advanced-airbag with the big difference between high and low deployment pressure ranges are applied to hard panel types of IPAB door system, it becomes more difficult to optimize the tearseam strength for satisfying deployment and head impact performance simultaneously. We introduced the ‘Operating Window’ idea from quality engineering to design the hard panel types of IPAB door applied to the advanced-airbag for optimal deployment and head impact performance. To accurately predict impact performance, it is important to characterize the strain rate.

Recently, the automotive industry has become more interested in knee injury, particularly in the application and development of knee airbag modules in vehicles to achieve a good rating during EuroNCAP and IIHS tests. Also, EuroNCAP and IIHS press the automotive industry to equip vehicles with knee airbag modules for occupant safety improvement in barrier tests. (1) Therefore, an invisible knee airbag module has been independently developed through design, simulation, static deployment tests and dynamic knee impact tests. A knee airbag module development process has been established and test results that were obtained from the development process are presented. Also, some design considerations for invisible knee airbag module development are discussed in this paper. A knee airbag module, which has been changed to match the IP lower panel shape and packaging specific vehicle environment, will be developed and produced in the near future.

Invisible Passenger-side Airbag (IPAB) door system must be designed with a weakened area such that the airbag will break through the Instrument Panel (IP) in the intended manner, with no flying debris at any temperature. At the same time, there must be no cracking or sharp edges at the head impact test (ECE 21.01). Needless to say, Head impact test must keep pace with the deployment test. In this paper, we suggested soft airbag door system that is integrally molded with a hard instrument panel by using Two-shot molding. First of all, we set up the design parameters of IPAB door for the optimal deployment and head impact performance by CAE analysis. And then we optimized the open-close time at each gate of the mold so that the soft and hard material could be integrally molded with the intended boundary. We could make the boundary of two materials more constant by controlling the open-close time of each gate with resin temperature sensor.

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Spherical involute surface topography for straight bevel gears including surface coordinates and normals are calculated. The significance of calculation of normal to the surface is mainly because it is needed for ease-off construction, tooth contact analysis and CMM measurement. The calculated surface and normals are then used to establish ease-off topography and the so-called surface of roll angle. The resultant surface of roll angle is used to allocate potential contact lines and contact ratio. The developed approach is applied to an example automotive differential straight bevel gear to calculate tooth surface, ease-off topography and surface of roll angle.

Nowadays the EV car industry is getting more evolved, and OEMs are providing more autonomous and IoT features in the vehicle to provide more comfort to users. Government and local authorities are upgrading the charging infrastructure in the different areas of the cities like shopping malls and near petrol pumps. One of the problems with the EV vehicle is the charging duration, which is time-consuming. Each time a person visits a charging station, there is a probability that the charger would be occupied also human assistance is required to insert the charging gun into the vehicle. This paper proposes a smart parking ecosystem with induction chargers connected to a wireless network and gives an idea about how an EV vehicle is connected to the same network for information exchange between vehicles and wireless induction chargers.

Internet of Thing (IoT) is the connecting network for applications like vehicles, smart devices, buildings etc., with the build in sensors to gather and share information for the user specific needs. The IoT platform offers prospects for a broad and direct integration of the manual world and the digital world by enabling things to be sensed and controlled remotely through existing network infrastructure. Self-contained programs can also be executed on it. This work projects on the integration of the IoT concept to the MOR-socket to manage, monitor and control the energy consumption of smart devices in a smart building. To achieve this, a simulation using Proteus 8.0 professional is made to obtain a virtual MOR-socket. This system is modeled with three prioritized loads of different current rating. The first priority load is the lighting load, second is the motor load and the final one is a load of higher current rating than the other two.

The STS water system is treated with iodinated water in order to prevent microbial contamination. This water is prepared by adding a concentrated solution of iodine to Ground Service Equipment (GSE) before adding the water in that unit to the spacecraft system. The solution is prepared by dissolving iodine in ethanol to make a tincture stock solution. While this procedure is rapid, the ethanol increases the carbon levels in the STS potable water and may produce unpleasant odors. The resulting high carbon levels preclude the use of total organic carbon measurements as a water quality monitoring tool. The use of triiodide solutions was studied as a substitute for using ethanol solutions. Two dissolution agents, sodium iodide and hydriodic acid, were investigated. Sodium iodide was studied at molar concentration ratios ranging from 1:1 to 2.5:1 sodium iodide to molecular iodine.

The reaction of iodine, a potential disinfectant for use in the treatment of recycled water during long-duration manned space missions, and several organic substrates that are expected chemical constituents in a closed-loop recycle water system, yields iodinated disinfection by-products. The reactions were studied using procedures analagous to those developed by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency for evaluation of chlorinated disinfection by-products in water. The iodinated products formed in these studies were identified using gas chromatography with both electron capture and mass spectrometric detection. Aqueous solutions of acetic acid and of dextran produce iodinated alkyl-compounds when treated with iodine, as triiodide ion, at neutral pH. Similar treatment of phenol yields iodine-substituted phenols at appreciable concentrations.

The Space Transportation System uses a triiodide quaternary ammonium strong base resin to prevent microbial contamination of the crew's drinking water. Current plans for Space Station Freedom use the STS resin for microbial control in drinking water. Another use for this water is in the “salad machine” to grow vegetable plants hydroponically. Our experiments demonstrate that leaf lettuce (Lactuca sativa) grown in nutrient solution treated with the triiodide resin and it's next higher homologue, pentaiodide, result in greatly reduced growth or death. The triiodide and pentaiodide treatments reduced plant fresh weights to 0.2% and 0.04% of the controls respectively. Tissue analysis by neutron activation showed an iodine concentration of 0.47% to 0.6% in the experimental plants. Nutrient solution analysis showed an average residual concentration of 38 and 65 mg/l iodine at the end of the 30 day experiments for triiodide and pentaiodide treatments respectively.

Small engines for non-automotive applications include 2-stroke and 4-stroke gasoline engine concepts which have a reduced number of sensors due to cost and packaging constraints. In order to cope with future emission regulations, more sophisticated engine control and monitoring becomes mandatory. Therefore, a cost-effective way has to be found to gain maximum information from the existing sensors and actuators. Due to an increasing bio-fuel share in the market, the detection of bio-fuel content is necessary to guarantee a stable combustion by adapting the injection and ignition control strategy. Meaningful information about the combustion can be retrieved from combustion chamber ion current measurements. This paper proposes a general overview of combustion process monitoring in different engine concepts by measuring the ion current during combustion.

Recently, in order to warm up the catalyst temperature rapidly, the retard ignition management has been developed. However, the excess retard of ignition causes the combustion instability and misfire. In this case, the ion sensor has been used for detecting the combustion quality for the late burned cycle under the idling condition. Several researchers have focused on the potential of ion-current measurement for the retard ignition management. However, the interpretation of ion-current during the exhaust process under the idling condition is not clear. In this study the source of ion-current for the late burned cycle during the exhaust process is focused. In order to measure the flame propagation process in the cylinder and the exhaust pipe, the single-cylinder test engine was used instead of production engine. Several ion probes were mounted on the cylinder head gasket, the piston head and the exhaust pipe for detecting the flame front.

Contemporary diesel engines are high-tech power plants that provide high torques at very good levels of efficiency. By means of modern injecting-systems such as Common-Rail Injection, combustion noise and emissions could be influenced positively as well. Diesel engine are therefore used increasingly in top-range and sports cars. Today's production ECUs have no or only very low feedback regarding the process in the combustion chamber. As long as this data is missing, the design of the maps in the ECU can only be a compromise, since production tolerances and aging processes have to be considered in advance. Disturbances in the combustion process may not be detected at all. If more knowledge about the course of combustion is provided, especially the start of combustion (SOC), various operating parameters, such as the pilot injection quantity or the beginning of current feed to the injector, could be adjusted more precisely and individually for every cylinder.

Close-loop feedback combustion control is essential for improving the internal combustion engines to meet the rigorous fuel efficiency demands and emission legislations. A vital part is the combustion sensing technology that diagnoses in-cylinder combustion information promptly, such as using cylinder pressure sensor and ion current measurement. The promptness and fidelity of the diagnostic are particularly important to the potential success of using intra-cycle control for abnormal cycles such as super knocking and misfiring. Many research studies have demonstrated the use of ion-current sensing as feedback signal to control the spark ignition gasoline engines, with the spark gap shared for both ignition and ion-current detection. During the spark glow phase, the sparking current may affect the combustion ion current signal. Moreover, the electrode gap size is optimized for sparking rather than measurement of ion current.

The use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel to power cogeneration gas engines has been a research topic over the last few decades and has currently gained importance, even more due to current circumstances related to decarbonisation efforts for the energy supply. A significant part of the research done is focused on the topic of combustion diagnostics, which can be fulfilled through different methods. This work investigates the feasibility of the ion current sensing for a pure hydrogen fueled series natural gas cogeneration engine. For this purpose, a variation of the fuel composition (from 100% natural gas to 100% hydrogen) was carried out while maintaining the indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) and the combustion phasing (CA50). This demonstrated that the efficiency increased monotonically as the hydrogen concentration rose. Simultaneously, the duration of the ion current signals gradually dropped but was still detectable at 100% hydrogen combustion.

Measurement of ion current signal from HCCI combustion was performed. The aim of the work was to investigate if a measurable ion current signal exists and if it is possible to obtain useful information about the combustion process. Furthermore, influence of mixture quality in terms of air/fuel ratio and EGR on the ion current signal was studied. A conventional spark plug was used as ionization sensor. A DC voltage (85 Volt) was applied across the electrode gap. By measuring the current through the gap the state of the gas can be probed. A comparison between measured pressure and ion current signal was performed, and dynamic models were estimated by using system identification methods. The study shows that an ion current signal can be obtained from HCCI combustion and that the signal level is very sensitive to the fuel/air equivalence ratio.

This paper describes an ion current measurement system with a new, modified inductive ignition system and evaluates the detection quality for misfire and knock detection. The System uses an ignition circuit with adjustable spark duration limitation. The measurement circuit is located at the low tension side of the secondary ignition coil. Due to the fact that a lot of influencing factors on misfire detection have been investigated, the estimation of the signal-to-noise-ratio is possible as well as the detection of critical operation points. Results of a closed-loop knock control with ion current are presented and are compared with the structure borne noise method.

Ion current sensors have high potential utility for obtaining feedback signals directly from the combustion chamber in internal combustion engines. This paper describes experiments performed in a single-cylinder optical engine operated in HCCI mode with negative valve overlap to explore this potential. A high-speed CCD camera was used to visualize the combustion progress in the cylinder, and the photographs obtained were compared with the ion current signals. The optical data indicate that the ions responsible for the chemiluminescence from the HCCI combustion have to be in contact with the sensing electrode for an ion current to start flowing through the measurement circuit. This also means that there will be an offset between the time at which 50% of the fuel mass has burned and 50% of the ion current peak value is reached, which is readily explained by the results presented in the paper.

The control of Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) (also known as Controlled Auto Ignition (CAI)) has been a major research topic recently, since this type of combustion has the potential to be highly efficient and to produce low NOx and particulate matter emissions. Ion current has proven itself as a closed loop control feedback for SI engines. Based on previous work by the authors, ion current was acquired through HCCI operation too, with promising results. However, for best utilization of this feedback signal, advanced interpretation techniques such as artificial neural networks can be used. In this paper the use of these advanced techniques on experimental data is explored and discussed. The experiments are performed on a single cylinder cam-less (equipped with a Fully Variable Valve Timing (FVVT) system) research engine fueled with commercially available gasoline (95 ON).

Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI), has the potential to improve the fuel economy and to reduce NOx emission significantly. Spark plug in SI engine and fuel injector in diesel engine can be used directly to control the start of combustion and the combustion period. However, the combustion of HCCI engine is controlled by the chemical kinetic mainly due to the temperature histories in the cylinder. Therefore the combustion process of HCCI engine cannot be directly controlled. Ion sensors such as a spark plug or a gasket are useful to detect the combustion information in production engines. In this study, the ion current was measured in an HCCI engine with the heated charge mixture of fuel and air without EGR when the charge temperature, equivalence ratio and fuel were varied. Simultaneously in-cylinder pressure was measured and the rate of heat release was calculated. The relationship between the rate of heat release and the ion current is mainly discussed.