Evaluating the impact of PSC inspectors’ professional profile: a case study of the Spanish Maritime Administration

Full-scale globalisation of trade has been accompanied by a progressive liberalisation of maritime transport. The proliferation of open registries has created a situation in which Port State Control (PSC) has become much more effective than the feeble or non-existent control exercised by those States. This study has been conducted on the influence of the professional profile of inspectors on inspection results. The objective of our paper was to evaluate the impact of PSC inspectors’ professional profile by conducting a case study of the Spanish Maritime Administration. The paper concludes with a discussion of the correlation between deficiencies detected and professional profiles.     

The influence of parents’ travel patterns,perceptions and residential self-selectivity to their children travel mode shares

Using the UK National Travel Survey from 2002 to 2006, this paper investigates the influence of households’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions on accessibilities and their travel patterns on their children daily travel mode share. In doing this, this study introduces a model structure that represents the complex interactions between the parents’ travel patterns, their perceptions on public transport services and their reported residential self-selectivity reasons and the children travel mode shares. This structure is analysed with structural equation modelling. The model estimation results show that parents’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on accessibilities and their daily travel patterns significantly influence the children’s daily travel mode shares. However, the effects are not uniform across household members. This study has revealed that households’ residential self-selectivity behaviours have more correlations with the children’s non-motorised mode shares, whilst the parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on transport infrastructure and public transport service qualities have more correlations with parents’ mode shares. The results also confirm that parents’ non-motorised modes use in travelling is highly correlated with the children’s physically active travel mode shares. However, at the same time, the results also show that the effects of mothers’ car use to the children travel mode shares is more apparent than fathers’.     

Robust control and actuator dynamics compensation for railway vehicles

A robust controller is designed for active steering of a high speed train bogie with solid axle wheel sets to reduce track irregularity effects on the vehicle’s dynamics and improve stability and curving performance. A half-car railway vehicle model with seven degrees of freedom equipped with practical accelerometers and angular velocity sensors is considered for the H_∞ control design. The controller is robust against the wheel/rail contact parameter variations. Field measurement data are used as the track irregularities in simulations. The control force is applied to the vehicle model via ball-screw electromechanical actuators. To compensate the actuator dynamics, the time delay is identified online and is used in a second-order polynomial extrapolation carried out to predict and modify the control command to the actuator. The performance of the proposed controller and actuator dynamics compensation technique are examined on a one-car railway vehicle model with realistic structural parameters and nonlinear wheel and rail profiles. The results showed that for the case of nonlinear wheel and rail profiles significant improvements in the active control performance can be achieved using the proposed compensation technique.     

Clamping performance of fastener in windshield wiper assembly using theoretical and experimental methods

Improper clamping of wiper arms can cause problems in the operation of the wiper. An excessive clamping force can cause damage to the wiper arm head. On the other hand, an insufficient clamping force can cause self-loosening of the nut. Given the lack of direct research on the clamping force of the fastener in wiper assembly, this study verifies the existing clamping performance of the fastener in windshield wiper assembly by theoretical and experimental methods. The theoretical calculation results show that all the clamping performance are satisfied under the general snow load condition. However, under the critical load condition, maximum assembly preload and safety margin against slipping are in disagreement with the standard values. This problem is solved by increasing the strength grade of the bolt. The experimental results show a reducing tendency of the clamping force during the snow durability test. However, this reducing clamping force during the 60,000 test cycles is acceptable. In the case of nut reusing more than two times possibly cause a problem of its loosening because of insufficient clamping force. Therefore, it is recommended that the nut should not be reused more than two times.     

One-dimensional model on fuel penetration in diesel sprays with gas flow

In diesel engine, spray penetration is usually changed by in-cylinder gas flow. Accurate prediction on diesel spray with gas flow is important to the optimal design of diesel fuel injection system. This paper presents a theory investigation focusing on the penetration of diesel spray with gas flow. In order to understand the effect of gas flow on the penetration of diesel spray, a one-dimensional spray model is developed from an idealized diesel spray, which is able to predict the spray behavior under different gas flow conditions. The ambient gas flow is simplified as ideal flow that has only constant flow velocity along x-axial and y-axial directions of spray. The x-axial and y-axial directions are respectively defined as along and vertical spray directions. The main assumption is that the y-axial direction gas flow has no effect on the penetration of spray along x-axial direction. The principles of conservation of mass and momentum are used in the derivation. Momentum of in-cylinder air flow is also taken into consideration. Validation of the model at stable condition is achieved by comparing model predictions with experimental measurements of diesel spray without gas flow from Naber's experiments. Furthermore, CFD simulations on penetration of diesel spray with gas flow were performed with the commercial code AVL-fire. The onedimensional model is validated by the penetration results with gas flow from CFD calculation. Results show that a reasonable estimation of the spray evolution can be obtained for both with and without ambient gas flow conditions.     

Robust inspection technique for detection of flatness defects of oil pans

This paper discusses two different methods for the detection of flatness defects present on the mounting surfaces of oil pans using laser-scanned point clouds. The first method involves registration, which is a widely used method in the field of 3D data inspection: scanned point clouds are registered with CAD data and the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm is used for further comparison. The second method is our proposed method, a simple yet effective method for measuring the flatness of an oil pan mounting surface. The process is based on the construction of a reference plane on the scanned surface. The oil pan mounting surface is scanned by a 3D laser scanner, obtaining point cloud data that is then further processed to reduce noise. Using this processed data, a reference plane parallel to the direction of the mounting surface is defined at the mean position of the mounting surface. The direction of the reference plane is determined by the normal vector of the mounting surface. Construction of the reference plane is carried out by the singular value decomposition (SVD) technique. The deviation of the surface from the reference plane is measured by calculating the error distance between the points of the surface to the reference plane using the least-squares method.     

Design process to minimize roof surface defects using a flexural function and Finite Element analysis

The appearance and exterior precision of passenger cars aesthetics has become an important factor in the automotive industry. During vehicle assembly, the curvature of the roof can change slightly and create cosmetic defects that affect the exterior appearance. The critical factor causing curvature change on the roof is the thermally driven expansion of an elastomer-based mastic sealer which is applied between the exterior roof panel and support rail during the frame assembly process. Therefore the expansion of the mastic sealer was modeled to predict the curvature change in the roof panel. In order to evaluate the causes and predict the curvature change quantitatively, a Finite Element (FE) simulation of the oven heating and mastic curing was performed. Validation of the simulation model was performed by comparing the local deformation and amount of the curvature change on the roof obtained from the actual process. In order to minimize the curvature change, the Taguchi method was used in conjunction with the FE model where a total of eight factors were chosen to perform a sensitivity analysis. In order to exclude the deformation due to residual stress resulting from the oven process, it was selected as a noise factor. Response was taken as the maximum curvature change calculated by a flexural function which was used to distinguish absolute curvature that is not affected by the horizontal or vertical movement of roof panel. A total of 18 cases were analyzed with length of each sealer, pitch of sealer, and rail location being identified as the most influential factors affecting the curvature change. Using the optimum values, the amount of curvature change in the roof panel was reduced by 12 percent.     

Pressure model based coordinated control of VGT and dual-loop EGR in a diesel engine air-path system

This paper describes a pressure-model-based coordinated control method of a variable geometry turbine (VGT) and dual-loop exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) in a diesel engine air-path system. Conventionally, air fraction or burnt gas fraction states are controlled for the control of dual-loop EGR systems, but fraction control is not practical since sensors for fractions are not available on production engines. In fact, there is still great controversy over how best to select control outputs for dual-loop EGR systems. In this paper, pressure and mass flow states are chosen as control outputs without fraction states considering the availability and reliability of sensors. A coordinated controller based on the simple control-oriented model is designed with practical aspects, which is applicable for simultaneous operations of high pressure (HP) EGR, low pressure (LP) EGR, and VGT. In addition, the controller adopts the method of input-output linearization using back-stepping to solve the chronic problems of conventional pressure-based controllers such as coupling effects between operations of HP EGR, and VGT. The control performance is verified by simulation based on the proven GT-POWER model of a heavy-duty 6000cc diesel engine air-path.     

Trigger algorithm of vehicle automatic crash notification system

The Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) system is an effective technology to decrease the crash response time, improve the level of post-accident rescue and alleviate the severity of injuries. To realize this system, a vehicle terminal is developed. And based on a moving window integral algorithm, the trigger algorithm of ACN system is designed. By comparing the effect of different window widths on the trigger algorithm, we select the window width of the moving window integral algorithm as 8 ms. After system is triggered, different notify types was determined according to the change of velocity in the moving window. A sled impact simulation test shows that the impact can be identified rapidly and also the notify types can be judged by the trigger algorithm. A vehicle road test proves that the ACN system has no false trigger cases. The outcomes of this study support identifications of accidents and crash severities for both occupants and emergency centers.