Effect of injection condition and swirl on D.I. diesel combustion in a transparent engine system

The objective of this work was to investigate the effects of injection conditions and swirl on D.I. diesel combustion using a transparent engine system. The test engine is equipped with a common rail injection system to control injection conditions and to obtain split injection characteristics. A combustion analysis and steady flow test were conducted to measure the heat release rate due to cylinder pressure and the swirl ratio. In addition, spray and diffusion flame images were obtained using a high speed camera. The LII & LIS methods were also used to obtain 2-D soot and droplet distributions. High injection pressure was found to shorten ignition delay, as well as to enhance peak pressure. The results also revealed that the heat release rate in the premixed combustion region was markedly reduced through the use of pilot injection, while the soot distribution and the heat release rate in the diffusion combustion region were increased. The swirl effect was found to shorten ignition delay at certain injection timings, and to enhance the heat release rate in all experimental conditions.     

Prediction of vibrating forces on meshing gears for a gear rattle using a new multi-body dynamic model

An efficient multibody dynamic model was developed to predict the vibrating transmitted gear forces of loaded and unloaded pairs of helical gears simultaneously at all speeds. The model can also calculate the bearing forces of a manual transmission that, in turn, may be converted to rattling noises. The bending of meshing gear teeth and torsional flexibility of transmission shafts were considered and embodied effectively in the multibody dynamic model by calculating the tooth bending stiffness and adding a torsion spring on a shaft section between two gears, respectively. The reactive forces on teeth and bearings were calculated and compared using three different models that were developed for this study — an equivalent model, a rigid-body model, and a frequency-based model. The equivalent model took only 58% computation time, compared to the frequency-based method, even though the two showed very similar results.     

Dependence of fatigue limit of high-tension bolts on mean stress and ultimate tensile strength

High tension bolts in critical joints in internal combustion engines are susceptible to fatigue failure. Computeraided bolted joint design procedures require knowledge of the dependence of bolt fatigue limit on the mean stress and ultimate tensile strength. This dependence is investigated with staircase fatigue limit tests. The test results show that when the bolt fatigue limit is estimated with the nominal stress of the bolt, it decreases with increasing tensile strength and nominal mean stress. However, there is a range of the nominal mean stress where the bolt fatigue limit is almost constant. The test results are interpreted with finite element analysis.     

Improving the Performance of Loop-Sensor-Based Traffic-Information System by (M+PLL) Circuit

Conventionally a phase-shift detection method (PSDM) and a frequency-shift detection method (FSDM) have been used in loop detectors. The PSDM has a fast response time and is very effective in detecting vehicles traveling at normal speeds. However, it is well known that the detection results are erroneous for vehicles traveling at low speeds in heavy traffic conditions. On the other hand, the FSDM greatly improves the detector performance for heavy traffic conditions. However, this method is not effective in fast and normal traffic conditions. Thus, in order to collect accurate traffic data for all traffic conditions, this paper proposes combining two methods using the digital OR logic. In the developed circuit, a phase-locked loop (PLL) circuit is used for measuring the phase change. This paper also develops a new loop detector instrumentation method using the so-called M circuit for detecting frequency change. The developed method has been tested for various traffic conditions. Experimental results show that the new combined M and PLL detection method greatly improves the accuracy in all traffic conditions, reducing the error rate in measuring traffic flow by more than 83%, when compared to the PSDM.     

Integration of GPS and monocular vision for land vehicle navigation in urban area

For land vehicle navigation in urban area, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers often suffer from the lack of positioning accuracy, availability, and continuity due to insufficient number of visible satellites and multipath errors. To mitigate this problem, this paper proposes an efficient hybrid positioning method combining a single frequency GPS receiver and a monocular vision sensor. The proposed method is advantageous in that it requires only low-cost hardware and no external map aiding. Compared with existing vision-based methods, the proposed method directly measures absolute heading angle based on the images of straight road segments. For the reason, the proposed method is resilient to multipath errors. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by the experiments with field-collected real measurements; one with good satellite visibility and the others with poor satellite visibility. Comparison with existing positioning methods demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed method in urban area.     

探查水下矿物资源的AUV动力控制系统开发

Valuable mineral resources are widely distributed throughout the seabed. autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are preferable to remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) when probing for such mineral resources as the extensive exploration area makes it difficult to maintain contact with operators. AUVs depend on batteries, so their power consumption should be reduced to extend exploration time. Power for conventional marine instrument systems is incorporated in their waterproof sealing. External intermittent control of this power source until termination of exploration is challenging due to limitations imposed by the underwater environment. Thus, the AUV must have a power control system that can improve performance and maximize use of battery capacity. The authors developed such a power control system with a three-step algorithm. It automatically detects underwater operational states and can limit power, effectively decreasing power consumption by about 15%.     

Reliability-based topology optimization based on bidirectional evolutionary structural optimization using multi-objective sensitivity numbers

Reliability-based topology optimization (RBTO) is used to obtain an optimal topology satisfying given constraints, as well as to consider uncertainties in design variables. In this study, RBTO was applied to obtain an optimal topology for the inner reinforcement of a vehicle’s hood based on bidirectional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO). A multi-objective topology optimization technique was implemented to obtain the optimal topology for two models with different curvatures while simultaneously considering the static stiffness of bending, torsion, and natural frequency. A performance measure approach (PMA) with probabilistic constraints formulated in terms of the reliability index was employed to evaluate the probabilistic constraints. The optimal topology obtained by RBTO was evaluated and compared to that obtained by deterministic topology optimization (DTO). A more suitable topology was obtained through RBTO than DTO even though the final volume obtained by RBTO was generally slightly greater than that obtained by DTO. The multiobjective optimization technique based on BESO can be applied very effectively with topology optimization for a vehicle’s hood reinforcement.     

Fracture properties of aluminum foam crash box

This study investigates the compression property experiment to examine impact absorption when aluminum foam is applied to crash box in order to absorb impact energy in car crash with low speed. The result of compression property experiment shows that case 6, which involves the buckling that collapses into 5-layer structure, is the best model with regard to impact absorption. This study analyzes impact characteristics according to the structure of crash box which influences such factors as damage and safety of vehicles. As the simulation result can be agreed with experimental graph, all experimental data at this study are verified. These experimental results can be applied into real field effectively. It also proposes the effective design to improve impact performance by analyzing the property of crash box through its compressive test.     

Hot judder simulation of a ventilated disc and design of an improved disc using sensitivity analysis

In a disc brake system, thermal expansion of the material is caused by friction energy that is generated by the sliding contact between a disc and pad during braking. This phenomenon, thermo-elastic instability, can lead to hot spots on the disc surface and a hot judder phenomenon. Transient finite element analysis has been used to simulate this phenomenon. Three dimensional finite element models of a disc, pad, and cylinder were created. Each part was connected by a joint. Contact condition was applied to the disc and pad with a friction coefficient (μ) of 0.4. A convective heat transfer coefficient was set as 40 W/m²K. Using a commercial program SAMCEF, the simulation of the thermo-mechanically coupled system was performed. In order to find the sensitive parameters of brake judder, sensitivity analysis was carried out with consideration for disc design parameters. As a result, the hot spot phenomenon was confirmed and hot judder was predicted. Moreover, the more sensitive parameters of the hot judder phenomenon were presented. Finally, an improved disc model and an analysis technique were verified by comparison to dynamo test results.