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.     

Vibration reduction of H/Shaft using an electromagnetic damper with mode change

The objective of this study is to develop a damper that can reduce the amplitude of vibration in various frequency ranges. Previous H/Shaft vibration reduction methods work in a passive way. A dynamic damper reduces the amplitude of vibration at its first mode, but vibration still appears at the second mode. A mass damper or hollow shaft can shift the natural frequency to a lower or higher region. The fixed operating frequency prevents vibration from being reduced outside the operating frequency range. The proposed damper uses electromagnets as either masses or actuators to change the damper mode between dynamic damper mode and mass damper mode. The electromagnetic damper (EMD) can change its mode to respond to the vibration excitation at both low and high frequencies. The vibration reduction performance was evaluated by FRF tests in laboratory and vehicle conditions. The results were compared with those of a dynamic damper and indicate that the amplitude of vibration is reduced by 95.6 % when the EMD is implemented on an H/Shaft, whereas only 61.9 % vibration reduction is achieved by the dynamic damper.     

A receding horizon sliding control approach for electric powertrains with backlash and flexible half-shafts

Active control of electric powertrains is challenging, due to the fact that backlash and structural flexibility in transmission components can cause severe performance degradation or even instability of the control system. Furthermore, high impact forces in transmissions reduce driving comfort and possibly lead to damage of the mechanical elements in contact. In this paper, a nonlinear electric powertrain is modelled as a piecewise affine (PWA) system. The novel receding horizon sliding control (RHSC) idea is extended to constrained PWA systems and utilised to systematically address the active control problem for electric powertrains. Simulations are conducted in Matlab/Simulink in conjunction with the high fidelity Carsim software. RHSC shows superior jerk suppression and target wheel speed tracking performance as well as reduced computational cost over classical model predictive control (MPC). This indicates the newly proposed RHSC is an effective method to address the active control problem for electric powertrains.     

Insights into vehicle trajectories at the handling limits: analysing open data from race car drivers

Race car drivers can offer insights into vehicle control during extreme manoeuvres; however, little data from race teams is publicly available for analysis. The Revs Program at Stanford has built a collection of vehicle dynamics data acquired from vintage race cars during live racing events with the intent of making this database publicly available for future analysis. This paper discusses the data acquisition, post-processing, and storage methods used to generate the database. An analysis of available data quantifies the repeatability of professional race car driver performance by examining the statistical dispersion of their driven paths. Certain map features, such as sections with high path curvature, consistently corresponded to local minima in path dispersion, quantifying the qualitative concept that drivers anchor their racing lines at specific locations around the track. A case study explores how two professional drivers employ distinct driving styles to achieve similar lap times, supporting the idea that driving at the limits allows a family of solutions in terms of paths and speed that can be adapted based on specific spatial, temporal, or other constraints and objectives.     

布达佩斯城市交通发展战略与启示

分别从概况、战略目标、实施策略等3个方面对布达佩斯城市交通发展的总体战略及公共交通、道路网络、静态交通、步行及自行车交通、交通管理等发展战略进行了阐述。由此得出,居民出行线路上任何一种交通方式的低效都将破坏整个交通链的效率,只有整个交通链所有交通环节的和谐发展,才能够使公共交通在运输服务上较小汽车具有竞争力;只有综合利用公共交通与私人交通,才能使城市交通与土地利用相协调。最后,结合布达佩斯和国内实践经验,总结提出了一种包含人口、经济、地理、环境、技术、制度等要素的“六棱形”城市交通发展战略规划模型。