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Up to now, the reliability achieved by COTS components was largely sufficient for avionics, in terms of failure rate as well as time to failure. With the implementation of new and more integrated technologies (90 nm node, 65 nm and below), the question has arisen of the impact of the new technologies on reliability. It has been stated that the lifetime of these new technologies might decrease. The drift is expected to be technology dependent: integration, technology node, materials, elementary structure choices and process pay a key role. Figures have been published, which gives smaller lifetime than the 30 years generally required for avionics. This would of course impact not only the reliability, but also the maintenance of COTS-based avionics. Hence a new policy should be defined for the whole COTS supply chain. Faced with these impending risks, different methodologies have been developed [1], [2].

A new concept of the linear air turbine vehicle is proposed (reference 1). The tracked air cushion and air driven rapid transit system is designed for the future high speed ground transportation in the urban area. Through the compressed air pipe lines to the passive vehicle, the system employes the principle of compressor, pipe, heating chamber, nozzle, turbine, air cushion and jet in a new combination. This vehicle contributes no air, thermal, vibration nor noise pollution. Many technical, environmental and economical problems have been discussed. The primary results indicate that this is indeed a very efficient, practical and economical system for the future high-speed ground transportation in the major cities.

This paper presents the development of a new isocyanuric acid (ICA) non-post cure vulcanizing system for polyacrylic elastomers which contain epoxy groups as cure sites and their application for ATF Hose. The ICA-based cure system consists of isocyanuric acid with an onium salt accelerater and a urea derivative retarder. This cure system exhibits good processability during mixing, good storage stability of the mixed stock and good steam cure properties. The vulcanizates exhibit good physical properties, excellent compression set without post cure, hot water resistance, low metal corrosion and ATF resistance, without sacrificing the distinct advantages of a polyacrylic elastomer. The very good characteristics obtained with this cure system for polyacrylic elastomers make them ideally suited for ATF hose.

Current windshield manufacturing processes produce residual tensile stresses near the edges of windshields. This residual tensile stress reduces the ability of the windshield to withstand suddenly applied external loading over a short time interval near the edge. Present manufacturing processes can reduce some of the residual tensile stress produced during the annealing process, but currently it is technically difficult to eliminate. However, an innovative and more cost-effective solution for the residual tensile stress problem has been proposed. Application of a thin film of polycarbonate around the perimeter of the windshield allows the energy generated during impact loading to be dissipated without the need to change the windshield's material properties.

We have developed a new wall wetting model to predict the transient Air/Fuel ratio excursion in a port fuel injected (PFI) engine due to changes in air or fuel flow. The quasi-dimensional model accounts for fuel films both in the port as well as in the cylinder of a PFI engine and includes the effects of back-flow on the port fuel films to redistribute and vaporize the fuel. A multi-component fuel model is included in the simulation; it gives realistic fuel behavior and allows the effects of different fuel distillation curves to be studied. The multi-component fuel model calculates the changing composition of the fuel puddles in the port and cylinder during the cycle. The inclusion of an in-cylinder fuel film allows the model to be used for cold start conditions down to 290 K. The model uses the Reynold's analogy to calculate the fuel vaporization process and uses a boundary layer calculation to solve for the liquid film flow.

A new USB powered portable 4-channel real time Dynamic Signal Analyzer and its automotive applications are described. The design and architecture lend themselves to realtime NVH measurements and analysis in the field, in-vehicle or on production lines. Built-in signal conditioning provides for direct sensor power while the embedded DSP provides for signal processing on-board. Performance and implementation of FFT, digital filters and order analyses are presented.

Accurate and fast positioning of large aircraft component is of great importance for Automated Alignment System. The Ball joint is a widely-used mechanical device connecting the aircraft component and positioners. However, there are some shortcomings for the device in man-machine engineering, such as the entry state of the ball-head still needs to be confirmed by the workers and then switched to the locking state manually. To solve above problems, a new positioning mechanism is present in this paper, which consists of a ball-head and a ball-socket. The new device is equipped with a monocular vision system, in which a calibrated industrial camera is used to collect the images of the ball-head. And then, the 3-D coordinate of the ball-head center is calculated by a designed algorithm, guiding the positioner to capture the ball-head. Once the ball-head gets into the ball-socket, the pneumatic system will drive the pistons to move to the specified location.

This paper discusses the development of a new hydraulic pump for use in heavy duty truck power steering systems. It is hydraulically balanced in terms of shaft bearing loads and end plate deflection forces. It is capable of operation up to 2000 psi and 10 gpm output. It also includes a relief valve bypass to reservoir feature which makes it more tolerant of sustained relief valve operation. The design is easily adaptable to various mounting and reservoir configurations. In addition, the paper describes some of the tests which were used to evaluate the new design.

A semi-empirical model is proposed to represent the scavenging process in cross, loop or uniflow scavenged engines. The model is based on the assumption that in most cases (if not in all) the time variation of the mass fraction of fresh air content in the gas passing through the exhaust port (β) exhibits an “S” type curve. An exponential function of the form of is suggested to fit this curve where the shape and the form factors may consider any combination of perfect displacement, perfect mixing and short-circuiting processes. The charging efficiency was then calculated and compared with other models - the isothermal mixing, the non-isothermal mixing, the Benson model and a detailed computer model. The new model has been found as a realistic model for modern engine design and an easy-to-use model for computer simulations.

In order to build spacecraft thermal models and to compute temperatures, ASPI Industries (ASPI) uses in Cannes a complete and coherent software chain. Based on a nodal approach, CORATHERM allows to treat both radiative and conductive problems by using original numerical and mathematical methods. However, the rapid evolution of the spatial production and ever-growing competition between the different industrial actors makes it necessary to increase reactivity. In this perspective several axes of development have been decided. In the present paper the development of a new pre- and post-processing tool is presented. This tool will substitute our currently used CIGAL software which is getting obsolete. After a solid trade study about in-house, marketed and freeware possible solutions, ASPI decided to entrust the development of CIGAL 2 to Open CASCADE (EADS) for the advanced capabilities, flexibility and reliability of its open-source software development platform.

In this paper, the predictive control strategy is employed to improve the current tracking performance of hub motor in 4WD electric vehicle due to its fast dynamic response. But the performance of the conventional predictive deadbeat current control suffers greatly from the parameter variations and other disturbances. Toward this, this paper presents a new predictive control strategy for hub motor; this control scheme combines an improved predictive control law with a state-observer to estimate the future motor currents and system disturbances based on a decoupled model. It provides a decoupled control of hub motor and offers stability against the variations in motor inductance and robustness against system uncertainties. The feasibility and validity of the proposed predictive current control strategy is verified through the simulation results.

Fuel chemistry plays a crucial role in the continued reduction of particulate emissions (PE) and cleaner air quality from vehicles and equipment powered by internal combustion engines (ICE). Over the past ten years, there have been great improvements in predictive particulate emissions indices (correlative mathematical models) based on the fuel’s composition. Examples of these particulate indices (PI) are the Honda Particulate Matter Index (PMI) and the General Motors Particulate Evaluation Index (PEI). However, the analytical chemistry lab methods used to generate data for these two PI indices are very time-consuming. Because gasoline can be mixtures of hundreds of hydrocarbon compounds, these lab methods typically include the use of the high resolution chromatographic separation techniques such as detailed hydrocarbon analysis (DHA), with 100m chromatography columns and long (3 - 4 hours) analysis times per sample.

In this work we present a new procedure for customizing, in the desired format, requirements reports generated by a Requirements Engineering Environment. This environment includes tools for: 1- capturing textual and pictoric requirements; 2- templating requirements documents that can be adjustable to the formats required by the certification authorities or system engineering groups; 3- translating features from/to the main word processors used in the industry (Word, Excel, etc. formats); 4- managing requirements configuration. It provides gains of productivity, correctness, reusability, traceability, coverage, etc, improving the efficiency of the projects. The procedure emphasizes items 2 and 3, and is illustrated with some examples driven from the aerospace industry.

A new procedure is described for measuring realistic on-the-road vehicle directional response characteristics. Conventional control system analysis techniques are used in the procedure to derive the transfer function relating steer input to vehicle lateral motion. The influence of the driver's limited torque capabilities on the steering system input is introduced in a nontraditional, though direct, manner. This approach produces somewhat different descriptions of vehicle response than have been obtained in the past, when such descriptions did not include this driver influence. Since the resulting transfer function is a unique on-the-road description of the vehicle dynamics, realistic vehicle motion response to any quantifiable steer input can be computed. This procedure offers the additional benefits of test procedure simplicity and minimum test road facility requirements.

An economical and proven new process for manufacturing large automotive parts in high volume is exciting Detroit. The Bailey Division of USM Corporation, an Emhart Subsidiary, has demonstrated commercially that large automotive parts can be injection molded using glass-fiber reinforced thermoset polyester polymers. More particularly, the process lends itself to the manufacture of parts with Class A surfaces without sink marks from ribs and bosses showing. There are advantages for the design engineer, the parts manufacturer and the assembly plant. Dimensionally stable, light weight Class A surface parts that can be painted on the body assembly paint line can now be made using readily available raw materials.

The carbothermal reduction of ilmenite and iron- bearing silicates are important in the manufacture of steel and perhaps for manufacture of oxygen on the moon. Oxygen recovery from ilmenite and iron silicates is of interest because of the abundance of such minerals on the lunar surface and the relative ease of their reductions. A novel carbothermal reduction process is developed for the reduction of these minerals. This presentation summarizes an experimental study of the carbothermal reduction of ilmenite and iron-bearing silicates at temperatures between 850°C and 1100°C. Extremely high reduction rates are observed and investigated for carbothermal reduction of ilmenite by using deposited carbon. These results are compared to previous kinetics studies with regards to the different activation energy values reported.

A new proportional collection system for extremely low tailpipe emission measurement in transient conditions has been developed. The new system can continuously sample a minute flow of exhaust gas, at a rate that is proportional to the engine exhaust rate. A zero grade gas dilution technique is utilized to prevent the influence of pollutants in atmospheric air that are the same concentration level as those in the exhaust gas. The system has accuracy within ±5%. For the direct exhaust gas flow meter, a pitot tube type flow meter is utilized as it is simple, heat resistant, sufficiently accurate and has low flow-resistance characteristic. For the collection and dilution controllers, two mass flow controllers (MFC) were adopted. The MFCs' output can be adversely influenced by variation of the specific heat of the sample gas, resulting in flow reporting error.