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This paper addresses a proactive product stewardship initiative designed to monitor, manage, and minimize emissions of particular additives used in plastics, including those in automobiles. These plastics additives are brominated flame retardants. They are used in certain automobile plastics and textile applications to help prevent fires from starting, delay the spread of fires, or delay the time to flashover, providing people more time to escape burning vehicles. The Voluntary Emissions Control Action Plan (VECAP ) is a practical product stewardship initiative designed to manage, monitor, and minimize industrial emissions of brominated flame retardants into the environment.

The importance of autonomous vehicle operation to satisfy future safety and productivity requirements is emphasized by the current National plans for IVHS and AHS development and deployment. Daimler-Benz Research, in cooperation with Freightliner Corporation, is developing a research vehicle VECTOR (Vision Enhanced/Controlled Truck for Operational Research) which currently is undergoing testing of a vision-based control system for lateral guidance. This effort is building on experience from prior Daimler-Benz and PROMETHEUS projects, including the test vehicles VITA (VIsion Technology Application) and OSCAR (Optically Steered CAR). The paper describes this work and future expansion plans to incorporate longitudinal control systems in VECTOR.

A series of full-scaled car-to-car frontal offset crash tests within passenger car category were conducted to research the current incompatible situations using Hyundai Autonomous Crash Vehicle System. The first test using two midsize cars with 50% overlap and 50km/h each was conducted to compare the injury levels and deformations with the offset regulation case, and check the test results within two same vehicles for test repeatability. The second test using midsize and minisize car with mass ratio of 1.58 :1 was done. The last test with MPV and small car at closing speeds of 120kph was followed. Mass, stiffness and geometry effects are investigated. Simulation results of car-to-car frontal offset and side impacts in case of MPV-to-small and small-to-MPV are included for better understanding. Finally a few design recommendations are also suggested.

Laboratory studies have indicated that closed-loop air/fuel control system characteristics have an effect on the performance of three-way catalysts (TWC). For this paper, this effect was examined on various production automobiles. Studies were conducted on three vehicles which demonstrated an observable range of air-fuel control strategies ranging from tight to wide air-fuel perturbation. To classify control system performances, data in the form of lambda (λ) traces was collected using an NGK AF-100 air-fuel ratio meter during operation of the 1975 U.S. Federal Test Procedure (FTP). Emissions performance on these three vehicles during the hot stabilized phase of the FTP cycle and for subsequent sweep test evaluations are described for two three way catalysts having different engine aging histories.

Side impact crashes with fatal or serious injuries were selected from the National Automotive Sampling System/Crashworthiness Data System files. Deformation patterns for the sample of crashes were compared with the damage seen in regulatory tests. In particular, the rate of involvement of the sill and pillar structures was considered. The study suggests these structures are less involved in real crashes than in the current regulatory Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 214 test. Suggestions for altering the test conditions are made.

Vehicle systems utilizing a stratified charge engine have been evaluated for their emission potential. They have shown the ability to meet the 2.0 gm/mi NOx emission standard without EGR at low mileage, but require some form of aftertreatment device to simultaneously achieve emission levels of 0.41 gm/mi HC and 3.4 gm/mi CO. The system hardware required in conjunction with the stratified charge engine is described.

This is a summary of a paper which first appeared in the International Journal of Crashworthiness under the title: “Side Impact Protection - Occupants in the Far-Side Seat”, Vol. 3, No.2, pp 93-122. Readers are directed to the full paper for a more comprehensive discussion of the issues presented here. Much of the applied vehicle side impact occupant protection research to date has concentrated on occupants seated beside the struck side of vehicles. These occupants are defined as ‘near-side’ occupants. Real world crash evidence however has shown that occupants seated on the side away from the struck side, defined as ‘far-side’ occupants, are still subject to a risk of injury. This paper examines side impact epidemiology from an injury causation perspective, and endeavours to explain evidence indicating head injuries and seat belt related injuries constitute a significant proportion of all far-side impact injuries.

The estimation of vehicle battery performance is typically addressed by testing the battery under specific operation conditions by using a model to represent the test results. Approaches for representing test results range from simple statistical models to neural networks to complex, physics-based models. Basing the model on test data could be problematical when testing becomes impractical with many years life time tests. So, real time estimation of battery performance, an important problem in automotive applications, falls into this area. In vehicles it is important to know the state of charge of the batteries in order to prevent vehicle stranding and to ensure that the full range of the vehicle operation is exploited. In this paper, several battery models have studied including analytical, electrical circuits, stochastic and electro-chemical models. Valve Regulated Lead Acid “VRLA” battery has been modelled using electric circuit technique.

This paper describes a CAE-based methodology used to identity major factors influencing vehicle structural performance and crash energy management in full-frontal vehicle-to-vehicle collisions. Finite element models of an “average” SUV and an “average” full-size passenger vehicle were used in this study. The determining factors of vehicle compatibility in multi-vehicle collisions are relative mass, relative stiffness and relative geometry. Four parameters of the average SUV, mass, fore rail length, fore rail thickness, and fore rail height were selected as design variables. A uniformly spaced Optimal Latin Hypercube sampling technique was employed to probe the design space of these variables using thirteen simulation runs. Dash intrusions in the passenger vehicle and the absorbed collision energy in both vehicles were selected as response variables.

A detailed numerical investigation of the conjugate heat transfer problem in an annular-type venturi-flow cooling system, meant for removal of heat from localized, high power heat sources, has been carried out for a wide range of Reynolds numbers. Comparison with experiments show qualitative agreements for all quantities of interest, but there are some quantitative differences. Possible reasons are given. Results for the venturi- and simple pipe- flows are also compared to assess the relative merits of these two systems.

This paper discusses the development and characteristics of a new digital flight control system (DFCS) being used in the Titan IIIC space launch vehicle. In this system, flight equations for the boost phases and coasting phases are time-shared with guidance equations in a new, general-purpose digital computer. Special software has been incorporated in the DFCS so that it can be used for a broad spectrum of mission and payloads. In addition, malfunction-detection and correction logic has been incorporated into the software for improved mission reliability. The paper describes the special tools and techniques used in developing the DFCS software; it discusses some of the solutions to development problems concerned with digital filter accuracy, environmental noise susceptibility, and bending mode foldover; and it presents flight-test results.

Diesel engines are irreplaceable in tunnel construction. The particulate emissions of present day engines are so high that the imission limits valid since 1991 cannot be attained by ventilation alone. This problem had to be solved preparatory to the large tunnel projects in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Several retro-fitting measures were investigated both in the laboratory and in field tests, within the scope of the Project VERT. Oxidation catalytic converters, exhaust gas recirculation, and the usage of special fuels cannot be recommended. Particulate trap deployment, in different systems, was mostly successful. Particular attention was focused on the dependable filtration of finest particulates < 200 nm. The VERT proved that exhaust gas after-treatment with particulate traps is feasible, cost effective and controllable in the field. Pertinent directives are in discussion.

Particulate traps are mechanical devices for trapping soot, ash and mineral particles, to curtail emissions from Diesel engines. The filtration effectiveness of traps can be defined, independent of the pertinent engine, as a function of the particle size, space velocity and operating temperature. This method of assessment lowers cost of certifying traps for large-scale retrofitting projects [1,2]. VERT [3] is a joint project of several European environmental and occupational health agencies. The project established a trap-verification protocol that adapts industrial filtration standards [4] to include the influence of soot burden and trap regeneration phenomena. Moreover, it verifies possible catalytic effects from coating substrates and deposited catalytic active material from engine wear or fuel/ lubricant additives.

Increasing concern, about the health risk due to solid aerosols from engine combustion, has provoked more stringent imission limits, for soot particles in the range of pulmonary intrusion, at critical work-places (e.g. tunnel sites, see Table 1). Within the scope of the joint European project VERT, these emissions were characterized and their effective curtailment through exhaust gas after-treatment investigated. Diesel engines, irrespective of design and operating point, emit solid particulates in the range of 100 nm, at concentrations above 10 million particulates per cm3. Engine tests showed that a drastic curtailment of pulmonary intruding particulates seems not feasible by further development of the engine combustion, nor by reformulation of fuels, nor by deployment of oxidation catalytic converters. Particulate traps, however, can curtail the total solid particulate count, in the fine particulate range 15-500 nm, by more than two orders of magnitude.

The combined exhaust gas aftertreatment systems (DPF+SCR) are the most efficient way and the best available technology (BAT) to radically reduce the critical Diesel emission components particles (PM&NP) and nitric oxides (NOx). SCR (selective catalytic reduction) is regarded as the most efficient deNOx-system, diesel particle filters are most efficient for soot abatement. Today, several suppliers offer combined systems for retrofitting of HD vehicles. Quality standards for those quite complex systems and especially for retrofit systems are needed to enable decisions of several authorities and to estimate the potentials of improvements of the air quality in highly populated agglomerations. The present paper informs about the VERTdePN *) quality test procedures, which were developed in an international network project with the same name 2007-2011 (VERT … Verification of Emission Reduction Technologies; dePN … decontamination, disposal of PM / NP and of NOx).

This paper presents the results of the VEST experiment scheduled during the Italian “Marco Polo” Soyuz Mission in April 2002 about which the author was Principal Investigator. VEST is a new integrated system of clothing to be used in the space flight environment. Aim of the experiment was to demonstrate that the provision of a new integrated system of garments to the crew would increase their well being, would allow to collect useful data with less impact on the crew schedule and to prove that in general with VEST equipment less mass and less volume are required for the clothing system. The VEST experiment is the final purpose of the feasibility study in 2001 in order to improve living and working conditions in space by designing innovative fabrics suitable for life inside the International Space Station (ISS) while keeping style a priority.