Development of knowledge based body structure concept design model

The purpose of this study is to propose a concept design process for an automotive body structure using technical information on the major joints and members of vehicles. First, in order to collect the technical information on major joints and members, 17 vehicles were selected using benchmark data. The collected technical information for the selected vehicles was the cross sectional shapes of each joint and member which were used for the analysis of joint stiffness, crashworthiness and static stiffness of the member to make a database along with cross section properties. This study applied a ‘What If Study’ technique to perform a concept design of an automotive body using the analyzed information and selected cross section meeting the design objectives. The criteria for the selection of the cross section were defined by subdividing the defined design objectives of an automotive body structure and constraints into members and joints. In order to configure an analysis model of an automotive body structure using the selected cross section, a shape parametric model was used and static stiffness, dynamic stiffness and crashworthiness were assessed to evaluate the configured automotive body structure. The evaluation result showed that the crashworthiness and static/dynamic stiffness were improved compared to an existing body structure. In addition, the weight of the body structure was reduced. Through this study, the process that can rapidly and effectively derive and evaluate the concept design of an automotive body structure was defined. It is expected that, henceforth, this process will be helpful for the study of automotive body structures.     

Simulation of mixed gas formation for a spray-wall complex guided LPG direct injection engine

To obtain an ultralean air-fuel ratio and to reduce engine-out NOX and HC emissions induced by the richer mixture near the spark plug, a spray and wall complex guided combustion system has been developed by utilizing the fuel characteristics of LPG. The new combustion system configuration is optimized by using a commercial CFD code, FIRE V2013, and the reliability of the system has been experimentally demonstrated by Plane Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF). The mixture formation in the new combustion system under part load (2,000 rpm) is numerically simulated. With an injection timing of 40°CA BTDC, the LPG spray which is injected from two upper holes, reaches the ignition point, and the other part of the LPG spray which is injected from the bottom hole, is directed to the ignition point through the vertical vortices at the same time. At the ignition timing of about 20°CA BTDC, the two-part mixtures have been shown to form a stable and richer stratified mixture around the ignition point, and the maximum global air-fuel ratio reaches to 60: 1.     

Comparison of fuel efficiency and exhaust emissions between the aged and new DPF systems of Euro 5 diesel passenger car

This study was conducted to examine the impact of aged and new DPF systems of the Euro 5 diesel passenger car on fuel efficiency and exhaust emissions. Test diesel vehicle used in this study was equipped with diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and diesel particulate filter (DPF) as aftertreatment systems, and satisfied the Euro-5 emissions standard. The displacement volume of engine was 1.6 L and the cumulative mileage was 167,068 km before the test. The FTP-75 test procedure was used, and the time resolved and weight based exhaust emissions of total hydrocarbon (THC), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) were measured. The results show that the vehicle with the new DPF system has lower emissions of THC, CO and NOx than the aged one, and fuel efficiency also increased about 5 percent. The aged DPF system had higher backpressure due to the particulate matter (mostly in the form of ash) accumulated in the DPF. As was shown in the analysis using X-CT (X-ray computer tomography), the aged DPF system had particulate matter (PM) accumulated to a length of 46.6 mm. In addition, a component analysis of PM through XRF (X-ray fluorescence) analysis found that 50 % or more of the components consisted of the P, S, Ca, and Zn.     

Robust control for four-wheel-independent-steering electric vehicle with steer-by-wire system

A four-wheel-independent-steering (4WIS) electric vehicle (EV) with steer-by-wire (SBW) system is proposed in this paper. The fast terminal sliding mode controller (FTSMC) is designed for the SBW system to suppress external disturbances. Taking unstructured and structured uncertainties into consideration, a robust controller is designed for the 4WIS EV utilizing μ synthesis approach and the controller order reduction is implemented based on Hankel-Norm approximation. Since sideslip angle is the feedback signal of robust controller and it is hard to measure, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) is employed to estimate sideslip angle. To evaluate the vehicle performance with the designed control system, step and sinusoidal steering maneuvers are simulated and analyzed. Simulation results show that the designed control system have good tracking ability, strong robust stability and good robust performance to improve vehicle stability and handing performance.     

Occupant injury risk analysis at NASS/CDS database

Injury information for vehicle occupants from the body regions of the head, thorax, abdomen, and upper and lower extremities, due to the restraints and interior parts of the vehicle, were extracted from the 2009 ~ 2012 NASS/CDS database. For those cases with high occurrence frequency, a detailed and comprehensive data analysis was performed to find the relationship between the accident, occupant, vehicle, and injury data. A numerical frontal impact sled model with the Hybrid III dummy and the GHBMC human body model was constructed to simulate and identify those injury risks according to NASS/CDS. Among the 5,734 injuries to the aforementioned body regions from frontal crashes are, listed by frequency of occurrence, the lower extremity (27.8 %), upper extremity (21.3 %), thorax (15.1 %), face (10.9 %), spine (8.7 %), head (7.3 %), and abdomen (6.9 %). The main injury sources to the head were the windshield, side structure, and steering wheel. For the thorax and abdomen they were the seat belt and steering wheel. For the lower extremity it was the instrument panel. The main injury patterns for the head were the concussion and the contusion. For the thorax they were vessel laceration and lung contusion. For the abdomen they were laceration and contusion of the organs. For the lower extremity they were bone fracture and ligament rupture. The steering wheel and seat positions were main factors affecting head and thorax injury risks. From the sled impact simulation, high injury risks of the head and thorax were assessed respectively at conditions of steering column tilt down and rear most seat position, which correlated well with the findings from the NASS/CDS data analysis.     

Integrated approach to an optimal automotive timing chain system design

Ensuring engine efficiency is a crucial issue for automotive manufacturers. Several manufacturers focus on reducing the time taken to develop and introduce brand new vehicles to the market. Thus, a synergic approach including various simulations is generally adopted to achieve a development schedule and to reduce the cost of physical tests. This study involved proposing a design process that is very useful in the preliminary development stage through effective support from simulations. This type of simulation-based design process is effective in developing timing chain drives; the use of this process, based on results from multiple trials, showed improvements in performance including low friction and vibration, improved durability, and cost-effective part design when compared to conventional processes. This study proposes an integrated approach to the preliminary design of an automotive timing chain system. The approach involves structural and dynamic analyses. The details of the design process are described by using the case of a virtual engine. This study conducted and summarized a dynamic and structural analysis as well as topological optimization to describe a process to obtain optimal results. The results of this study indicated the following improvements in overall performance factors: 12.1 % improvement in transmission error, 10.1 % reduction in chain tension, 46 % reduction in tensioner arm weight, and 11 % reduction in transversal displacement.     

Approximate optimal AUTOSAR software components deploying approach for automotive E/E system

The AUTOSAR has been developed as the worldwide standard for automotive E/E software systems, making the electronic components of different suppliers to be employed universally. However, as the number of component-based applications in modern automotive embedded systems grows rapidly and the hardware topology becomes increasingly complex, deploying such large number of components in automotive distributed system in manual way is over-dependent on experience of engineers which in turn is time consuming. Furthermore, the resource limitation and scheduling analysis make the problems more complex for developers to find out an approximate optimal deploying approach in system integration. In this paper, we propose a novel method to deploy the AUTOSAR components onto ECUs with the following features. First, a clustering algorithm is designed for deploying components automatically within relatively low time complexity. Second, a fitness function is designed to balance the ECUs load. The goal of our approach is to minimize the communication cost over all the runnable entities while meeting all corresponding timing constraints and balancing all the ECUs load. The experiment results show that our approach is efficient and has well performance by comparing with other existing methods in specific and synthetic data set.     

Modeling research on manufacturing execution system based on large-scale system cybernetics

A cybernetics model of manufacturing execution system(MES CM) was proposed and studied from the viewpoint of cybernetics.Combining with the features of manufacturing system, the MES CM was modeled by"generalized modeling"method that is discussed in large-scale system theory.The mathematical model of MES CM was constructed by the generalized operator model, and the main characteristics of MES CM were analyzed.     

A data model applied to the knowledge-based ICAS

Image-guided computer aided surgery system (ICAS) contributes to safeness and success of surgery operations by means of displaying anatomical structures and showing correlative information to surgeons in the process of operation. Based on analysis of requirements for ICAS, a new concept of clinical knowledge-based ICAS was proposed. Designing a reasonable data structure model is essential for realizing this new concept. The traditional data structure is limited in expressing and reusing the clinical knowledge such as locating an anatomical object, topological relations of anatomical objects and correlative clinical attributes. A data structure model called mixed adjacency lists by octree-path-chain (MALOC) was outlined, which can combine patient's images with clinical knowledge, as well as efficiently locate the instrument and search the objects' information. The efficiency of data structures was analyzed and experimental results were given in comparison to other traditional data structures. The result of the nasal surgery experiment proves that MALOC is a proper model for clinical knowledge-based ICAS that has advantages in not only locating the operative instrument precisely but also proving surgeons with real-time operation-correlative information. It is shown that the clinical knowledge-based ICAS with MALOC model has advantages in terms of safety and success of surgical operations, and help in accurately locating the operative instrument and providing operation-correlative knowledge and information to surgeons in the process of operations.