Search Results

Approximately ninety percent of automotive wind tunnels in the world have incorporated or been built with a Moving Ground Plane (MGP). However, very little research has been published in the literature on the interaction of the MGP and the vehicle. The goal of this paper is to characterize the flow structures and unsteady motion of the isolated wheel wake and its interaction with a 5-belt MGP using numerical simulations. This paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study is carried out on the Mears (2004) wheel using IDDES model where the CFD process to be used later is validated against the experimental data. In the second part, a simulation is carried out for a 5-belt MGP system and the verification is carried out using the Von Karman integral formula for the boundary layer development over the belts.

Controllability of ignition timing and combustion phase by means of dual-fuel direct injection strategy in jet-controlled compression ignition mode were investigated in a light-duty prototype diesel engine. Blended fuel with lower reactivity was delivered in the early period of compression stroke to form the premixed charge, while diesel fuel which has higher reactivity was injected near TDC to trigger the ignition. The effects of several important injection parameters including pre-injection timing, jet-injection timing, pre- injection pressure and ratio of pre-injection in the total heat value of injected fuel were discussed. Numerical Simulation by using CFD software was also conducted under similar operating conditions. The experimental results indicate that the jet-injection timing shows robust controllability on the start of combustion under all the engine load conditions.

In this paper a test bench for measuring the Static Transmission Error of two mating gears is presented and a comparison with the results obtained with the commercial software GeDy TrAss is shown. Static Transmission Error is considered as the main source of overloads and Noise, Vibration and Harshness issues in mechanical transmissions. It is defined as the difference between the theoretical angular position of two gears under load in quasi-static conditions and the real one. This parameter strictly depends on the applied torque and the tooth macro and micro-geometry. The test bench illustrated in this work is designed to evaluate the actual Static Transmission Error of two gears under load in quasi-static conditions. In particular, this testbed can be divided in two macro elements: the first one is the mechanism composed by weights and pulleys that generates a driving and a braking torque up to 500 Nm.

With the passage of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, HFC-134a refrigerant will be phased down in all markets worldwide, including those where automotive companies have been slow to embrace HFO-1234yf. Engineers are currently being challenged to design MAC systems using alternate low GWP refrigerants that are allowed by regulations, and are simultaneously cost-effective to manufacture, energy efficient, safe, reliable, affordable for consumers, and also suitable in electrified vehicles.

Historically, crash development component testing has been conducted using gravity-based vertical drop towers. The drop tower carriage is loaded to a specified weight, raised to a specific height to achieve an energy target, and dropped onto the part. This long-used approach has significant limitations with respect to achievable speed and energy, part orientation, impact angle, useable impact surface, component size, etc. With the wide variance in simulating today’s global crash scenarios, a better approach is being developed using an impact sled. The most significant advantage of this system is that there is a much higher achievable speed and energy which can be controlled with precise accuracy. This paper will provide an overview of the impact sled test system, as well as the methodology used to conduct the testing. The overview will include the challenges faced during the development of the impact sled, as well as the need for accurate and precise component fixturing methods.

Thermal management of vehicle battery pack is crucial in determining the life/ageing of the battery pack, in establishing the range of the vehicle on a day to day basis and in determining the safety of the vehicle and occupants. An effective design of a thermal management system cannot be established solely through experimentation as it is time consuming and costly. Accurate computational models are required to aid in the design process. This study describes the development and validation of 3D computational model for simulating electrical and thermal characteristics of a vehicle-ready battery module. The modeling process starts with the full 3D CAD geometry of the module including the coolant channels and cold plate. As part of the study, an experimental test case was setup. This included a climate chamber for the initial soak of the module and to control ambient temperature. Coolant was pumped through channels underneath the cold plate atop which the cells sat in blocks.

Since the Extended range electric vehicle (EREV) powertrain structure is based on different power sources, a key vehicle design activity is related to development of an optimal control strategy for achieving a high fuel economy potential. The central role in developing an optimized energy management strategy is related to availability of computationally-efficient, high-fidelity EREV powertrain model. This paper proposes a method for developing an extended quasi-static backward-looking EREV powertrain model, which when compared to traditional backward model accounts for powertrain transient effects through additional fuel and battery state-of-charge consumptions. The effects of powertrain transients are characterized by means of extensive simulations of dynamic forward-looking EREV powertrain model covering a wide array of possible powertrain transient scenarios.

There has been growing demand for increased fuel efficiency, reduced emissions and improved power performance while maintaining reliability and durability of mechanical and structural systems in many different industries. The structural engineering components often experience long loading histories, typically ten million cycles or greater, i.e. high cycle fatigue (HCF) and very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) regimes. HCF in the range of 106-108 cycles and VHCF in the range of 108-1010 cycles are key design criteria for aerospace, automotive, military, transportation and many other industries. However, fatigue characterization of metal alloys in the HCF and VHCF regimes is hindered by limitations of traditional fatigue testing machines due to time and cost constraints. The development of high power piezoceramic actuators enables efficient and reliable fatigue tests in the HCF and VHCF regimes within a very short time frame on the basis of ultrasonic fatigue testing approaches.

Automotive powertrain mounting system (PMS) plays a key role in the vibration isolation and the comfort improvement in vehicle. So far, most of powertrain is modeled as a rigid body in 6 Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in research. Few comprehensive and overall optimization are considered which addresses the excitation of the powertrain, the vibration and noise inside the body and the transmission path of vibration together. In this paper, a 13-DOF model including automotive powertrain mounting system and the full vehicle is developed in order to achieve comprehensive and overall optimization for PMS. The minimum of vertical vibration at seat track and the noise at driver ear on the right side, the maximum of system's vibration isolation rate and the energy decoupling rate, the reasonable allocation of system natural frequencies are considered as the optimization targets. Genetic algorithm is used to solve the multi-objective optimization problem.

Driven by legislation, economics and increasing societal awareness, engine and vehicle manufacturers are facing increasing pressure to reduce vehicle emissions and deliver improved fuel economy. Significant reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will need to be achieved to meet these requirements whilst at the same time satisfying the more stringent forthcoming emissions regulations. This focus on techniques to reduce the tailpipe CO2 is increasing the interest in novel combustion technologies, including dilute combustion in gasoline engines. The pre-chamber based jet ignition concept produces high energy jets of partially combusted species that induce ignition at multiple locations in the main combustion chamber to enable rapid, stable combustion, even with dilute mixtures. The present study focusses on the beneficial synergies of the pre-chamber system with high geometric compression ratio (CR), Miller cycle operation and cooled external exhaust gas recirculation (EGR).

The development of the economy and the associated growth in trade both within the country and international transport, the associated construction and development of transport routes using elements of intelligent transport systems constantly require increasing the efficiency of trunk transportation. In addition, the development of new economic regions with an undeveloped road network is impossible without high-capacity motor vehicles and cross-country ability. To achieve these goals, the creation of active road trains, including multi-link ones, based on non-traditional technical solutions, is required. The idea of using multi-link trains in the system of intercity and international transportation is not new. However, at the present stage of development of automotive technology requires rethinking and use of new achievements of science and technology.

Gearbox fault diagnosis is one of the core research areas in the field of rotating machinery condition monitoring. The signal processing-based bearing fault diagnosis in the gearbox is considered as challenging as the vibration signals collected from acceleration transducers are, in general, a mixture of signals originating from an unknown number of sources, i.e. an underdetermined blind source separation (UBSS) problem. In this study, an effective UBSS-based algorithm solution, that combines empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and kernel independent component analysis (KICA) method, is proposed to address the technical challenge. Firstly, the nonlinear mixture signals are decomposed into a set of intrinsic mode function components (IMFs) by the EMD method, which can be combined with the original observed signals to reconstruct new observed signals. Thus, the original problem can be effectively transformed into over-determined BSS problem.

The paper presents the investigation on the Engine fuel efficiency improvement using one-dimensional (1-D) simulation software Ricardo WAVE. The study is carried out for a baseline multicylinder direct-injection turbocharged diesel engine of 2945 cc displacement, meeting the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)-II emission norms. Initially, the base simulation model is calibrated and observed for a good correlation between the experimental and simulation results for parameters like airflow rate, engine power, brake-specific fuel consumption (BSFC), and cylinder pressure. There is also an acceptable agreement between the predicted and actual measurement values for nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission. Now different combinations of turbochargers and combustion-related hardware are optimized in 1-D simulation, and the best combination is also verified experimentally.

In this paper, a quarter-car suspension system has been investigated for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)-classified road profile with various control strategies. The vehicle suspension system provides ride comfort and handling by reducing the transfer of road disturbances or irregular road profile to the passenger and cargo materials. The suspension also retains the road and tire contact, stabilizing the vehicle’s movements. A combination of fuzzy logic and neural network, i.e., adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), is deployed as a control strategy to control the quarter-car semi-active suspension model. Quarter-car suspension models with a passive control and semi-active controller with different control strategies, viz., Skyhook, Fuzzy Logic (FLC), and ANFIS, are designed and modeled in MATLAB/SIMULINK®.

Engine operation with spark ignition retarded from MBT timing is used at cold start to reduce HC emissions and increase exhaust gas temperature; however it also results in increased cyclic variations. Steady-state cold fluids testing was performed to better understand the causes of the cycle-to-cycle variations. Detailed analysis of individual cycles was performed to help gain an understanding of the causes of cyclic variations. The important results were: The primary cause of cyclic variations in IMEP is variations in the combustion phasing (location of 50% mass fraction burned). The expansion ratio decreases rapidly during combustion for retarded spark timing and therefore the phasing determines individual cycle thermal efficiency and IMEP. Variations in the late burn have little impact on the IMEP as this combustion occurs close to EVO and does little expansion work.

The oxidation of surrogate diesel fuels composed of mixtures of three pure hydrocarbons with and without their cetane numbers chemically enhanced using 2-ethylhexyl nitrate (2-EHN) is studied in a variable pressure flow reactor over a temperature range 500 - 900 K, at 12.5 atmospheres and a fixed reaction time of 1.8 sec. Changes in both low temperature, intermediate temperature, and hot ignition chemical kinetic behavior are noted with changes in the fuel cetane number. Differences appear in the product distribution and in heat release generated in the low and intermediate temperature regimes as cetane number is increased. A chemically enhanced cetane fuel shows nearly identical oxidation characteristics to those obtained using pure fuel blends to produce the enhanced cetane value. The decomposition chemistry of 2-EHN was also studied. Pyrolysis data of 10% 2-EHN in n-heptane and toluene are reported.

In vehicle-pedestrian impacts, the kinematics and severity of pedestrian injuries are affected by vehicle front shapes. Accident analyses and multibody simulations showed that for mini vans the injury risk to the head is higher, while that to the legs is lower than for bonnet-type cars. In mini-van pedestrian impacts, pedestrians ran high risks of a head impact against stiff structures such as windshield frames. When pedestrians are struck by a car with a short hood length, their heads are likely to strike into or around the windshield. The injury risks to the head by such an impact were examined by head form impact tests. The HIC rises from contact with the cowl, windshield frame or A pillar, and it lessens with increasing distance from these structural elements.

A recently developed in-cylinder fuel injection probe was used to deposit a small amount of liquid fuel on various surfaces within the combustion chamber of a 4-valve engine that was operating predominately on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). A fast flame ionization detector (FFID) was used to examine the engine-out emissions of unburned and partially-burned hydrocarbons (HCs). Injector shut-off was used to examine the rate of liquid fuel evaporation. The purpose of these experiments was to provide insights into the HC formation mechanism due to in-cylinder wall wetting. The variables investigated were the effects of engine operating conditions, coolant temperature, in-cylinder wetting location, and the amount of liquid wall wetting. The results of the steady state tests show that in-cylinder wall wetting is an important source of HC emissions both at idle and at a part load, cruise-type condition. The effects of wetting location present the same trend for idle and part load conditions.

Early activation of catalyst by quickly raising the temperature of the catalyst is effective in reducing exhaust gas during cold starts. One such technique of early activation of the catalyst by raising the exhaust temperature through substantial retardation of the ignition timing is well known. The present research focuses on the realization of quick warm-up of the catalyst by using a method in which the engine is fed with a large volume of air by feedforward control and the engine speed is controlled by retarding the ignition timing. In addition, an intake air flow control method that comprises a flow rate correction using an adaptive sliding mode controller and learning of flow rate correction coefficient has been devised to prevent control degradation because of variation in the flow rate or aging of the air device. The paper describes the methods and techniques involed in the implementation of a quick warm-up system with improved adaptability.

This paper discusses a study conducted by GM to better understand the factors that influence injury potential in vehicle-to-vehicle side impacts. A number of other studies have been done which focus primarily on frontal vehicle-to-vehicle compatibility. GM focused on side impact compatibility in this study due to the risk of harm generally associated with this type of crash. Real world field performance was studied through an extensive six-state field analysis of recent model year (‘94+) vehicles. Of particular interest in this study was an efficacy analysis of the MVSS 214 dynamic side impact standard, which was phased-in starting with some 1994 model year passenger cars. Physical side impact crash testing of a 1997 passenger car was used to investigate the relationship of impacting mass, speed, geometric profile and stiffness on side impact intrusion and occupant injury.