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In recent years, global warming, depletion of fossil fuels, and reducing pollution have become increasingly prominent issues, resulting in demand for environmentally-friendly two-wheeled vehicles capable of reducing CO2 emissions. However, it remains necessary to meet customers’ expectations by providing smaller drivetrains, lighter vehicles, and support for long-distance riding, among other characteristics. In the face of this situation, hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) systems are considered to be the most realistic method for creating environmentally-friendly powertrains and are widely used. This research introduces a hybrid electric two-wheeled vehicle fitted with an electrical variable transmission (EVT) system, a completely new type of electrical transmission that meets the aforementioned needs, achieving enhanced fuel efficiency with a compact drivetrain. The EVT system comprises double rotors installed inside the stator.

In recent years, efforts to reduce CO2 emissions (carbon neutrality) have accelerated worldwide. In the aluminum manufacturing industry, CO2 emissions can be reduced by switching the raw materials of choice; from virgin ingots to recycled ingots. However, the possible characteristic change accompanying the usage of impurity-ridden recycled ingots severely limits its applications, which also limits its potential contribution to carbon neutrality. Determining how impurity elements present in recycled ingots can affect the function of manufactured components is a necessary first step towards expanding the usage of recycled ingots. In this study, we aimed to apply recycled ingots to the monolithic cylinder made of hypereutectic Al-Si alloy and investigated how impurity elements in recycled ingots affect properties (especially seizure characteristic). Die-cast cylinders using virgin and recycled ingots were manufactured and their properties were investigated.

Reduction in the cycle-to-cycle variation (CCV) of combustion in internal combustion engines is required to reduce fuel consumption, exhaust emissions, and improve drivability. CCV increases at low load operations and lean/dilute burn conditions. Specifically, the factors that cause CCV of combustion are the cyclic variations of in-cylinder flow, in-cylinder distributions of fuel concentration, temperature and residual gas, and ignition energy. However, it is difficult to measure and analyze these factors in a production engine. This study used an optically accessible single-cylinder engine in which combustion and optical measurements were performed for 45 consecutive cycles. CCVs of the combustion and in-cylinder phenomena were investigated for the same cycle. Using this optically accessible engine, the volume inside the combustion chamber, including the pent-roof region can be observed through a quartz cylinder.

A connecting rod made of titanium alloy is effective for lower fuel consumption and higher power output comparing to a steel one because the titanium connecting rod enables to reduce the weight of both of reciprocating and rotating parts in an entire engine substantially. But up to now, it has been adopted only to expensive and small-lot production models because a material cost is high, a processing is difficult and a wear on a sliding area should be prevented. In order to adopt the titanium connecting rods into a more types of motorcycles, appropriate materials, processing methods and surface treatment were considered. Hot forging process was applied not only to reduce a machining volume but also to enhance a material strength and stiffness. And the fracture-splitting (FS) method for the big-end of the titanium connecting rod was put into a practical use.

This paper proposes a novel engine starter system composed of a small-power electric motor and a simple mechanical valve train. The system makes it possible to design more efficient starters than conventional systems, and it is especially effective to restart engines equipped with idling stop systems. Recently, several idling stop systems, having intelligent start-up functions and highly-efficient generate capabilities have been proposed for motorcycles. One of challenges of the idling stop systems is the downsizing of electric motors for starting-up. However, there are many limitations to downsize the electric motors in the conventional idling stop systems, since the systems utilize the forward-rotational torque of the electric motors to compress the air-fuel mixture gas in the cylinders. Our studies exceeded the limitations of downsizing the electric motors by mainly using the engine combustion energy instead of the electric energy to go over the first compression top dead center.

The improvement of fuel consumption is the most important issue for engine manufactures from the viewpoint of energy and environment conservation. A piston-cylinder system plays an important role for the reduction of an engine friction. For the improvement of the frictional behavior of the piston-cylinder system, it is beneficial to observe and analyze the frictional waveforms during an engine operation. To meet the above-mentioned demand, frictional waveforms were measured with using the renewed floating liner device. In the newly developed floating liner device, an actual cylinder block itself was used as a test specimen. The measured single cylinder was an aluminum monolithic type made of hypereutectic Al-17%Si alloy using a high pressure die casting process. The combined piston was a light weight forged piston and a DLC coated piston ring was used. For the measurement, 110cc air cooled single cylinder engine was used.

A monolithic type aluminum (Al) cylinder made of hypereutectic Aluminum-Silicon alloy has been widely used for motorcycle applications. It has a lightweight structure and a superior cooling ability owing to its material property and surface finishing. Usually the cylinder bore surface of the monolithic type Al cylinder is finished by an etching process or a honing process in order to expose silicon (Si) particles from aluminum (Al) matrix for the improvement of the tribological properties. The morphology of the cylinder bore surface including the exposure of Si particles is supposed to make an important effect on its tribological properties, especially on the anti-scuffing property. In this research, the anti-scuffing property of three kinds of cylinder bore finishing, an etched surface, a Si exposure honed surface and a conventional plateau honed surface is evaluated with using a reciprocated type wear tester. The experimental results are analyzed by using Weibull analysis.

This study deals with reduced-order modeling of intake air dynamics in single-cylinder four-stroke naturally-aspirated spark-ignited engines without surge tanks. It provides an approximate calculation method for embedded micro computers to estimate intake manifold pressures in real time. The calculation method is also applicable to multi-cylinder engines with individual throttle bodies since the engines can be equated with parallelization of the single-cylinder engines. In this paper, we illustrate the intake air dynamics, describe a method to estimate the intake manifold pressures, and show experimental results of the method.

In four-cycle single-cylinder motorcycle engines, high Hertzian stress is generated on and beneath the big-end surface of the connecting rod. If the surface strength would be improved, the diameter of the big-end could be made smaller, making the entire engine smaller and lighter. Therefore, application of carbide dispersion carbonitriding using a vacuum furnace (hereinafter referred to as “vacuum CD carbonitriding”) on the big-end surface was investigated. Vacuum CD carbonitriding was carried out by three processes. The first was a CD carburizing process. This process is done to obtain granular cementite, but in order to avoid decreasing the strength, it is necessary to prevent the formation of coarsened cementite at the grain boundary. The second process was a refining process. This process is done for the purpose of refining the prior austenite grain size. The third process was a carbonitriding process.

The two-stroke engines were in the main stream of the outboard motors, but they have been replaced with the four-stroke counterparts reflecting the environmental protection movement in recent years. However, the replacement with four-stroke engines involves increased number of components and additional displacement, and the outboard motors tend to be larger and heavier. This represents an issue, since the maneuverability of the boat is degraded due to the inappropriate weight distribution on the boat. Yamaha outboard motors F300B and VF250A, of which the production started in the year 2009, are equipped with four-stroke engines, and yet achieved the light weight equivalent to their two-stroke counterparts. The production volume of these models reached 20,000 units.

Any improvements of the fuel economy with engines are always required for all petroleum fuel vehicles. The goal of such improvements must lead to reduce fuel consumption of the engines. However it may cause some deterioration with riding feeling that is one of the most important characteristics of the motorcycles. Yamaha has developed the strong hybrid motorcycle "HV-X"(hereafter the motorcycle). The motorcycle consists of a 4-stroke 250 cm₃ a cylinder engine and two 300V AC motors with a planetary gear set. The motorcycle reduces fuel consumption without severe influence onto the drive performance by utilizing the electric power.

This paper reports visualization of behavior of spray, wall film, and initial flame propagation in an SI engine with port fuel injection system for motorcycle in order to directly investigate their influences on combustion and relations among them. Borescopes were used to visualize the flame propagation in the combustion chamber and wall film in the intake port. Various injection systems and injection parameters were tested: injection direction, timing, and size of droplets to investigate the effect of mixture formation. It is concluded that combustion stability under low load condition is greatly influenced by mixture inhomogeneity in the combustion chamber whose evidence is the luminous emission. It is caused by direct induction of considerable amount of liquid fuel with large size of droplets into combustion chamber or too inhomogeneous mixture in the intake port.

This paper presents a practical simulation model of the rubber V-belt CVT which is widely used as a low cost driveline element for small displacement motorcycles. The characteristic of this CVT is determined by the axial force balance between driver and driven pulleys, and the elastic force of a rubber V-belt. Because these axial and elastic forces are calculated by the kinematic and FEM analysis, a large-scale simulation model which costs long execution time for the calculation is needed to estimate the characteristic of CVT. This calculation uses the one-dimensional simulation model built up with MATLAB and SIMULINK environment, so that it was possible to get the calculation result with relatively low execution time. The elastic deformation of the rubber V-Belt was calculated by a simple spring model which was verified by experiments and FEM.

Mixture formation is one of the most important factors for the combustion in the spark ignition engine with port fuel injection. The relation between combustion and mixture quality, however, is not quantitatively well established. In this study, the connection of combustion and mixture formation was explored with various measurement techniques. Borescopes were used in order to investigate the flame propagation in the combustion chamber and behavior of spray and fuel film on the wall in the intake port. For the purpose of investigation on the effect of mixture formation, various port fuel injection systems and parameters were tested and compared: direction, timing, and size of droplet. An SI engine for small vehicle was used under condition of 4 000 rpm. The investigation by images obtained has shown that inhomogeneity of mixture causes low combustion stability, especially due to direct introduction of fuel droplets into the combustion chamber.

Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. has been developing 1kW generator system of direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). The performance and durability characterization of a 1kW DMFC stack that the weight of the stack was decreased 20% in comparison with that of previous stack was evaluated. The DMFC operation condition was optimized from the design of experiment and the results of the net output. The overall system efficiency of the Yamaha DMFC system using the stack became a maximum in current 20A, was 30%. The stack was generated at 20A under the Daily Start up and Shutdown (DSS) condition for 1500h. This report describes some latest results concerning the durability characterization, which were obtained in the NEDO's project.

A construction of the technology concerning fuel consumption improvement is an important problem not only for the four-wheeled vehicle but also for the motorcycle in recent years when petroleum resources are depleted rapidly. Yamaha originally developed a new fuel injection system (YMJET-FI) and applied the system to a single cylinder, water-cooled and small-displacement engine. In this paper, we would introduce the results of improving the fuel economy with keeping high performance. Improvements were noted in three matters, namely, in the lower load range, 1.Strengthening of in-cylinder flow, 2.Atomization of fuel spray, and 3.Reduction of wall film quantity.

Regarding S.I. gasoline engine, it is one of the most important matters to eliminate cyclic variation of combustion. Especially with high compression ratio and high boosted engine, the difficulties increase more. This paper describes the analysis of combustion process precisely by using many ion-current probes and CFD with the unique approaches. The number of used ion-current probes is 80 and they are mounted on whole combustion chamber wall especially including moving intake and exhaust valve faces. Thus cyclic variations of flame propagation can be measured precisely under high compression ratio and high boosted conditions in a multi-cylinder engine. In addition, CFD combustion simulation is conducted through full four strokes of continuous nine cycles. Moreover air motion and pressure vibration in intake and exhaust manifolds in whole cycles are considered. These unique approaches have made CFD result correspond to the measurement result of cyclic variations of actual combustion.

In this study, lean combustion concept was investigated to realize better Fuel Economy (FE) on a single cylinder motorcycle engine. A low-pressure direct injection (DI) system was applied to realize lean stratified combustion concept with good combustion stability. In addition, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system applicable to small motorcycle engines was used to attain FE improvement and NOx reduction. EGR gas temperature and EGR return position were focused on and effects on FE and NOx were investigated. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used to reveal EGR distribution and air motion in both the intake port and the cylinder. As a result, the influence of the stratified charge, EGR temperature and EGR return position on FE and NOx were explained quantitatively. These techniques were effective in reducing NOx and improving FE for a single cylinder motorcycle engine.

The demands on internal combustion engines for low emissions and fuel consumption are increasing year by year. On the other hand, engines to be used in motorcycles need to provide high output and quick response to meet user desire. In order to realize low fuel consumption while keeping high performance, it is necessary to properly understand cyclic variations during combustion as well as the influence of the injection system on fuel control during transient periods. The current paper reports on the results of a study in the influence of port fuel injection on combustion stability in a small displacement motorcycle engine, using both a series of experiments and CFD. The parameters of the injection systems under study are: (1) injection targeted area, (2) injection timing, and (3) fuel droplet size. The results of the current study show that injection aimed at the upstream wall yielded the best combustion stability.

Gasoline fueled Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion with internal exhaust gas re-circulation using Negative Valve Overlap (NOL) was investigated by means of calculation and experiment in order to apply this technology to practical use with sufficient operating range and with acceptable emission and fuel consumption. In this paper we discuss the basic characteristics of NOL-HCCI with emphasis on the influence of intake valve timing on load range, residual gas fraction and induction air flow rate. Emission and fuel consumption under various operation conditions are also discussed. A water-cooled 250cc single cylinder engine with a direct injection system was used for this study. Three sets of valve timing were selected to investigate the effect of intake valve opening duration. Experimental results demonstrated that an engine speed of approximately 2000rpm yields an NMEP (Net Mean Effective Pressure) range from 200kPa to 400kPa.