Prediction of fatigue life and estimation of its reliability on the parts of an air suspension system

Air suspension systems have been implemented in various commercial vehicles, such as buses and special purpose trucks, because of the comfortable ride and easy height control. An evaluation of the durability of vehicle parts has been required for service life and safety starting in the early stages of design. The cyclic load applied to the vehicle can cause fatigue failure of parts, such as the suspension frame. This paper presents a method to predict the fatigue life of the suspension frame at the design stage of the air suspension system used in a heavy-duty vehicle. To estimate the fatigue life using the SN method, the Dynamic Stress Time History (DSTH) is necessary for the part of interest. DSTH can be obtained from the results of the flexible body dynamic analysis using the Belgian road simulation and the Modal Stress Recovery (MSR) method. Furthermore, the reliability of the predicted fatigue life can be evaluated by considering the variations in material properties. The probability and distribution of the expected life cycle can be obtained using experimental design with a minimum number of simulations. The advantage of using statistical methods to evaluate the life cycle is the ability to predict replacement time and the probability of failure of mass-produced parts. This paper proposes a rapid and simple method that can be effectively applied to the design of vehicle parts.     

Auto-ignition and micro-explosion behaviors of droplet arrays of water-in-fuel emulsion

The characteristics of auto-ignition and micro-explosion behaviors of one-dimensional arrays of fuel droplets suspended in a chamber with high surrounding temperature were investigated experimentally with various droplet spacings, numbers of droplet and surrounding temperatures. The fuels used were pure n-decane and emulsified n-decane with varied water contents ranging from 10 to 30%. All experiments were performed under atmospheric conditions with high surrounding temperatures. An imaging technique using a high-speed camera was adopted to measure ignition delay, flame lifetime, and flame spread speed. The camera was also used to observe micro-explosion behaviors. As the droplet array spacing increased, the ignition delay also increased, regardless of water content. However, the lifetime of the droplet array decreased as the droplet spacing increased. The micro-explosion starting time remained unchanged regardless of the number of the droplets or the droplet spacing; however, it tended to be delayed slightly as the water percentage and droplet spacing increased.     

Development of an LIF image processing technique for measuring drop sizes in a pre-swirl spray

Depth of field effects in laser sheet imaging were considered for droplet sizing of a pre-swirl spray. A pre-swirl spray is formed before the hollow-cone type main-swirl spray from a D.I. gasoline injector, and shows transient characteristics with high axial velocity. A microscopic imaging technique was applied to obtain high spatial resolution LIF tomograms of the pre-swirl spray. A 1 mm thick Nd:YAG laser sheet was used as a light source to make the LIF tomograms that were imaged using a high-resolution CCD camera. The droplet sizing of the pre-swirl spray was carried out using an image processing technique. In the image processing procedure, the laser sheet-straddling large-sized droplets were carefully taken into account to remove the errors caused by the depth of field effects from the limited thickness and the energy distribution of the laser sheet. The mean intensity of the individual droplets and the line profile of the LIF signal around the droplet edge were inspected to screen the laser sheet-straddling large-sized droplets. In order to consider the effects of the size-dependent LIF signal intensity, the size-classified or ensemble-averaged mean intensity of the individual droplets was introduced. The mean droplet sizes such as AMD and SMD were calculated using only screened droplets, and they slightly increase before considering the depth of field effects.     

3-D numerical and experimental analysis for airflow within a passenger compartment

People use cars so frequently that they always consider the air-conditioning, and thermal comfort of the driver and passenger when buying a new car. Therefore accurate simulation of the thermal performance of automobile air conditioners to improve human comfort has become increasingly important. In order to improve the thermal comfort of passengers, 3-D flow motion and thermal behavior within vehicles must be analyzed. In this paper, a numerical simulation was used to investigate thermal behavior in a vehicle. Because air temperature at an air vent is related to the cooling capacity of the air conditioner, the cooling capacity was calculated using ɛ-NTU (effective number of transfer unit) theoretical equations. Using the air temperature relationship between inlet and outlet vents as boundary conditions, a 3-D unsteady κ-ɛ turbulent model was used to give a transient analysis simulation of the temperature field and flow conditions in a vehicle’s passenger cabin. Cooling cycle analysis and conjugate heat transfer analysis at the inside surface of the cabin’s ceiling, floor and sides were also considered. The predicted temperature distributions in the vehicles passenger cabin were in good agreement with those obtained experimentally.     

Simulation of city bus performance based on actual urban driving cycle in China

This paper establishes the simulation model of a city bus on the basis of the EQ6110 bus prototype and its experimental data. According to the actual urban driving cycle, the fuel economy and the traction performance of the EQ6110 city bus have been simulated, and factors such as the driving cycle, the loss of power to engine accessories, the gear-shifting strategy, the fuel shut-off strategy of the engine, etc., which influence on the bus’s fuel economy, are also quantitatively analyzed. Some conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) driving cycles have a great influence on the fuel economy of a city bus; (2) under the typical urban driving cycle of the public bus in China, the engine fuel shut-off strategy can save about 1 to 1.5 percent of the fuel consumption; and (3) the optimized gear-shifting rules can save 6.7 percent of the fuel consumption. Experimental results verify that the fuel economy for the EQ6110 public bus is improved by 7.2 pecent over the actual Wuhan urban driving cycle of the current public bus in China.     

Effect on friction of engine oil seal with engine oil viscosity

Low viscosity engine oil can improve a vehicle’s fuel economy by decreasing the friction between the engine components. Frictional torque varies with the velocity change due to different viscosity characteristics of SAE grade 5W-20, 5W-30 and 5W-40 engine oils. The viscosity for each of these grades was measured to outline the effect low viscosity engine oils have on engine friction, which may lead to improved fuel economy. Engine oil seal frictional torque increases with the shaft rotational speed for all three engine oil grades. A decrease in engine oil seal frictional torque was confirmed when low viscosity engine oil was used. Also, the leak-free performance of the engine oil with the seal satisfied the life limit durability test criteria. Thus, low viscosity engine oil may be used to improve fuel economy by decreasing the frictional loss of the engine oil seal while having no negative impact on performance due to leak-free functioning.     

Transient characteristics of emissions during engine start/stop operation employing a conventional gasoline engine for HEV application

In this paper, we investigate the transient characteristics of combustion and emissions during engine start/stop operations in hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) applications. Hydrocarbon (HC) emissions during the initial 2^nd∼9^th cycles are found to be significantly greater when the engine is quickly started under the original engine calibration mode. Lower intake manifold absolute pressure (MAP) was also found to cause larger residual gas dilution and poor combustion, resulting in a higher HC concentration when the cranking speed was increased. The post-catalyst HC concentration was found in the way of initially decrease and then to increase again as the cranking speed was increased. A lowest concentration value was achieved at a cranking speed of 1000 r/min. Engine shut-down by fuel cut-off was shown to produce lower emissions than shut-down by ignition cut-off as one can avoid misfire of the last fuel injection cycle. The fuel deposited during the stop process seems to impact engine restart enrichment mostly during the initial 0.7 s for this engine, whose performance is dominated by the MAP transition characteristic and the time coefficient for fuel vaporization in this time period     

Optimized design for a MacPherson strut suspension with side load springs

Undesired lateral force inevitably exists in a MacPherson suspension system, which is liable to damper rod’s side wear and promotes the damper’s inner friction decreasing the ride performance from the suspension system. Substituting a new side load spring with curved centerline for the conventional coil spring has been proven able to solve these problems and Multi-body Dynamics combining with Finite Elements Analysis may be an efficient method in optimizing its design. Therefore, taking a passenger car as example, a detailed multi-body dynamics model for the suspension system is built to simulate forces exerted on the damper and the minimization of its lateral component is selected as the design target for the spring. When the structure optimization of the side load spring is performed using FEA software ANSYS, its vertical and lateral elastic characteristics, supported by test data, are analyzed. After importing FEA results back to the suspension system, the dynamics simulation can be performed to validate the optimization result.     

Effect of fuel stratification on initial flame development: Part 2-low swirl condition

This paper is the second invstigation on the effect of fuel stratification on flame propagation. In the previous work, the characteristics under the no port-generated swirl condition, i.e., the conventional case was studied. In this work, the flame development under the low swirl condition was considered. For this purpose, the initial flame development and propagation were visualized under different axially stratified states in a modified optical single cylinder SI engine. The images were captured by an intensified CCD camera through the quartz window mounted in the piston. Stratification was controlled by the combination of the port swirl ratio and injection timing. These were averaged and processed to characterize the flame propagation. The flame stability was estimated by the weighted average of flame area and luminosity. The stability was also evaluated through the standard deviation of flame area and propagation distance and through the mean absolute deviation of the propagating direction. The results show that the flame-flow interaction determines the direction of flame propagation and that the governing roles of the two factors vary according to the stratified state and the location in the cylinder. In addition, the flame development and the initial flame stability are strongly dependent on the stratified conditions, and the initial flame stability is closely related to the engine stability and lean misfire limit. Lastly, there is no essential difference in gasoline and CNG flame propagation characteristics.     

Adaptive neuron control using an integrated error approach with application to active suspensions

This paper proposes a new neuron control strategy for an active vehicle suspension system, with the emphasis on the study of multivariable and uncertain suspension characteristics. The novelty of this strategy is in the use of integrated error, which consists of multiple output errors in the regulated plant. By combining the integrated error approach with the traditional neuron control (TNC), integrated error neuron control (IENC) is presented. It provides a direct control to the multiple outputs of the control plant simultaneously. Taking a quarter-car model as an example, the proposed control strategy is applied and comparative simulations are carried out with various vehicle parameters and road input conditions. Simulation results prove the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed IENC method. In addition, the newly proposed neuron scheme provides a simple yet efficient new possibility for the control of a class of uncertain multivariable systems similar to an active vehicle suspension.