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Coil springs are crucial components of the clutch damper. Quantifying the stresses accumulated on them during operation is crucial in the prediction of remaining usable spring life. This paper demonstrates the use of a mathematical model-based approach in predicting the behavior of localized stresses on the spring used in clutch dampers. An equivalent cantilever beam model for spring coils solved using the theory of elastic stability is utilized to predict the spring response in operation, a contact model that translates the spring response into localized stresses due to wear and iterative wear model that accounts for surface morphology and change in geometry due to wear is illustrated in this paper for the prediction of wear.

Simulations used to estimate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and fuel consumption of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles over prescribed drive cycles often employ engine fuel maps consisting of engine measurements at numerous steady-state operating conditions. However, simulating the engine in this way has limitations as engine controls become more complex, particularly when attempting to use steady-state measurements to represent transient operation. This paper explores an alternative approach to vehicle simulation that uses a “cycle average” engine map rather than a steady state engine fuel map. The map contains engine CO2 values measured on an engine dynamometer on cycles derived from vehicle drive cycles for a range of generic vehicles. A similar cycle average mapping approach is developed for a powertrain (engine and transmission) in order to show the specific CO2 improvements due to powertrain optimization that would not be recognized in other approaches.

Journal bearings are machine elements designed to produce smooth (low friction) motion between solid surfaces in relative motion and to generate a load support for mechanical components. In a Journal bearing, the entire load is carried by a thin film of fluid present between the rotating and the non-rotating elements. The thickness of the film is very sensitive to ambient temperature, radial clearance and misalignment. Though these parameters are difficult to control, it is important to consider these as noises while designing the Journal bearing. When noises in the design space are very strong, the conventional DOE and RSM methods suppress the effect of control factors and render them irrelevant in the design process. This leads to overdesigning the product, which in turn adds more cost. The main objective of this work is to design a bearing, which is insensitive to noises at each stage of the product life cycle.

Emission, fuel economy and productivity in non-road mobile machinery (NRMM) depend largely on drive cycles. Understanding drive cycles can provide the in-depth information and knowledge that help the system integrator better optimize the vehicle management system. Some non-road engine test cycles already exist nowadays. However, these cycles are mainly for engine emission regulation purpose, and not closely tied to real world applications. Therefore, from both industries and academia, it has been the common practice to instrument and retrofit a vehicle, assign a professional driver operate the retrofitted vehicle for real testing, and compare the results to the baseline vehicle under the similar operating conditions. Obviously this approach is time consuming and resource intensive. In this paper, we attempt to address this issue by introducing a method of constructing standard drive cycles from in-field operation data.

In response to the demand to lower CO2 emission, all engine developers face the challenge of drastically reducing fuel consumption. At the same time, they will need to meet future exhaust emission legislation by simultaneously employing internal measures and after treatment systems. Additionally, they will have to deal with increasing fuel variability. As different properties can lead to very different behavior in engine operation, information onboard the vehicle providing the fuel composition would allow to adjust engine operating parameters accordingly, to make the most beneficial use of the available fuel quality. This will be obvious considering future diesel fuels blends, or the ever increasing amount of biodiesel content mixed into Diesel fuel, but could already be interesting considering existing fuel variability faced in Europe or America.

Heavy-Duty (HD) diesel engines fulfill the current NOx limits by a sophisticated combination of in-cylinder technologies and an aftertreatment system. In the face of current testing cycles with low average load and efficiency/CO₂ demands measures for the provision of an adequate exhaust temperature become a development core. An alternative to common exhaust management strategies could be variable valve actuation (VVA). Hence a self-developed camless valve actuation system was implemented on a single-cylinder research engine to investigate potential strategies. As these investigations require an appropriate test bench setup the paper consists of two parts. The first part describes the design process of the test bench and focuses on the Rapid Prototyping Systems (RPS) that enabled its operation. The second part discusses the results of different VVA-based exhaust management strategies and gives an outlook to further investigations.

The newest legislative trends enforce a significant decrease in CO2 emissions for commercial vehicles. For instance, in Europe a drop in fleet consumption of 15% and 30% is set as target by the regulation by 2025 and 2030. The use of carbon-neutral fuels offers possibilities regarding net-zero CO2 emissions - although not yet considered by the rules. Another challenging aspect is the drastic tightening of NOx emissions limits for future legislations, which is approved or being discussed both for the United States and for the EU. The current work describes the potentials of an innovative fuel, marketed as Gane fuel regarding performance, efficiency and emission behavior. First, the properties of the developed fuel are described: Gane is made from methanol blended with water and is tailored for diffusive combustion. The fuel blending is so defined to fulfill the combustion requirements.

Several diesel passenger car boosting systems were studied to assess their impact on vehicle performance and fuel economy. A baseline 1.5L diesel engine model with a single VGT turbocharger was obtained through Gamma Technologies' fast running model library. This model was modified to explore multiple two stage boosting systems to represent the anticipated architecture of future engines. A series sequential turbocharged configuration and a series turbocharger-supercharger configuration were evaluated. The torque curves were increased from that of the original engine model to take advantage of the increased performance offered by two stage boosting. The peak cylinder pressure for all models was limited to 180 bar. Drive cycle analysis over the WLTP was performed using these engine architectures, while assessing the sensitivity to various system parameters. These parameters include: vehicle weight and aerodynamic drag, EGR target maps, level of downspeeding, and turbocharger inertia.

Electrification is one of the megatrends across the industries, like electric vehicles, electric aircraft, etc. which needs advancement in power electronics component technology. As technology advances in miniaturization of power electronics, thermal-management issues threaten to limit the performance of these devices. These may force designers to derate the device performance and ultimately these compromise in design may increase the size & weight of the application. One of the technologies capable of accomplishing these goals employs a class of materials know as metal foam. Metal foams are lightweight cellular materials inspired by nature. The main application of metal foams can be grouped into structural and functional and are based on several excellent properties of the material. Structural applications take advantage of the light-weight and specific mechanical properties of metal foam.

Commercial vehicles are moving in the direction of improving brake thermal efficiency while also meeting future diesel emission requirements. This study is focused on improving efficiency by replacing the variable geometry turbine (VGT) turbocharger with a high-efficiency fixed geometry turbocharger. Engine-out (EO) NOX emissions are maintained by providing the required amount of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) using a 48 V motor driven EGR pump downstream of the EGR cooler. This engine is also equipped with cylinder deactivation (CDA) hardware such that the engine can be optimized at low load operation using the combination of the high-efficiency turbocharger, EGR pump and CDA. The exhaust aftertreatment system has been shown to meet 2027 emissions using the baseline engine hardware as it includes a close coupled light-off SCR followed by a downstream SCR system.

Higher demands on comfort and efficiency require a continuous improvement of the shift process. During the launch and shift process the clutch control is used to get a smooth and efficient behavior. In this short time of acting the shifting behavior can be rated. Many control concepts use a clutch characteristic to calculate the actuator signal based on the clutch torque. Therefore, a high quality of this characteristic is necessary. Because of the dynamic process during clutch engagement the clutch characteristic needs further information to reach a high accuracy for the control algorithm. In this paper an existing clutch torque characteristic is extended to a characteristic map where the clutch torque becomes a function of the current actuator signal of the clutch and the clutch slip. The extension of the torque characteristic describes the slip based dependencies, e.g. the friction coefficient.

Vehicle noise emission requirements are becoming more stringent each passing year. Pass-by noise requirement for passenger vehicles is now 74 dB (A) in some parts of the world. The common focus areas for noise treatment in the vehicle are primarily on three sub-systems i.e., engine compartment, exhaust systems and power train systems. Down- sizing and down- speeding of engines, without compromising on power output, has meant use of boosting technologies that have produced challenges in order to design low-noise intake systems which minimize losses and also meet today’s vehicle emission regulations. In a boosted system, there are a variety of potential noise sources in the intake system. Thus an understanding of the noise source strength in each component of the intake system is needed. One such boosting system consists of Turbo-Super configuration with various components, including an air box, supercharger, an outlet manifold, and an intercooler.

Helical gears are commonly used instead of spur gears due to their potential higher load carrying capacity, efficiency and lower noise. Transmission Error (TE) is defined as deviation from perfect motion transfer by a gear pair. TE is dominant source of gear whine noise and hence gears pairs are generally analyzed and designed for low TE. In the process of designing helical gears for lower TE, the shuttling moment can become a significant excitation source. Shuttling moment is caused due to shifting of the centroid of tooth normal force back and forth across the lead. The amount of shuttling force or moment is produced by combination of design parameters, misalignment and manufacturing errors. Limited details are available on this excitation and its effect on overall noise radiated from gear box or transmission at its gear mesh frequency and harmonics.

Charge motion inside the piston bowl is an important parameter in the development of the combustion process of DI Diesel engines. To snapshot this charge motion at the start of injection or the start of combustion, normally CFD simulation has traditionally been used. The use of CFD tools has provided some insight into the combustion process and therefore has shortened the development process of piston engines. To achieve a better understanding of the parameters which influence a low emission diesel-combustion the virtual approach needs hardware assisted validation. A test method has been developed to measure charge motion inside the piston bowl of a motored diesel engine at TDC using laser based Doppler Global Velocimetry (DGV). The use of this new measurement approach is versatile. Investigations can be conducted on charge motion caused by variation of compression ratio and piston bowl design or caused by valve timing or valve seat design.

For control of most automatic transmissions with wet clutches (e.g. dual clutch transmission), it is important to know the kiss point with high accuracy. The kiss point describes the value of the control variable for which the friction clutch begins to transmit torque. Another significant value during the filling process of a wet clutch is the takeoff point. This is the hydraulic pressure which causes the clutch piston to begin to move. This paper presents an innovative approach that enables the joint determination of the kiss point as well as the takeoff point in only one identification procedure. In contrast to existing methods, this method is able to identify both points without the necessity for undesired auxiliary system excitation. Therefore it is possible to reduce wear on system components such as synchronization rings. The method presented in this paper analyzes the measured filling pressure characteristic over time as the system response to a defined excitation.

Cold spray (CS) is a rapidly developing solid-state repair and coating process, wherein metal deposition is produced without significant heating or melting of metal powder. Solid state bonding of powder particles is produced by impact of high-velocity powder particles on a substrate. In CS process, metal powder particles typically of Aluminum or Copper are suspended in light weight carrier gas medium. Here high pressure and high temperature carrier gas is expanded through a converging-diverging nozzle to generate supersonic gas velocity at nozzle exit. The CS process typically uses Helium as the carrier gas due to its low molecular weight, but Helium gas is quite expensive. This warrants a need to explore alternate carrier gases to make the CS repair process more economical. Researchers are exploring another viable option of using pure Nitrogen as a carrier gas due to its significant cost benefits over Helium.

Future regulations for passenger cars will no longer focus on emission reduction only but also on reducing CO2. The use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in combustion engines is one solution which provides benefits in CO2 and in pollutant emissions at the same time. The conversion of Gasoline engines to CNG operation is well known. In this paper however - the operation of a passenger car diesel engine in Diesel - CNG dual fuel mode is investigated. The paper describes the experimental setup and measurement procedure that was chosen to assess combined Diesel - CNG combustion. Results for emissions, fuel economy (CO2), engine noise and combustion stability will be presented for three different operating points on a research single cylinder engine. Special focus lies on the partially/unburned hydrocarbon (HC) emissions which are typically high when CNG is well premixed and burning in a globally lean combustion environment.

For compliance with future more stringent emission standards exhaust emissions must be reduced. One possibility is to improve air-fuel ratio control quality. The approach presented in this paper uses virtual sensors to get a rough picture of the spatial distribution of lambda and oxygen storage states across the catalyst. This additional process information is gathered by means of a novel model for three-way catalysts. A state-space controller is used to maintain oxygen storage states predicted by the model at desired levels. The proposed control strategy has been implemented on a turbocharged, direct injection engine and successfully validated by means of emission measurements. A comparison with a commonly used air-fuel ratio control strategy is presented.

Manual transmissions for passenger cars are facing pressures due to rapid growth of automatic transmissions, which already represents more than 60% of Brazil market, and from higher torque demand due to strict emission legislation, which turbo engines had presented great contribution to it. To solve this contradictory issue, gears with higher strength and lower cost have been studied to replacement Nickel by Niobium in the steels. Furthermore, this technology could be applied to solve the issues with electrified vehicle, where high torque, speed and lifetime are demanded pursued for gears. This study aimed to build prototypes and compare the S-N curves, fracture analysis, microstructure for three kinds of steels (QS4321 with Ni, QS1916 FG without Ni & with Nb and QS 1916 without Ni and Nb) in the condition carburized, hardened and tempered with and without shot peening.

Commercial vehicles require continual improvements in order to meet fuel emission standards, improve diesel aftertreatment system performance and optimize vehicle fuel economy. Aftertreatment systems require significant space claim which makes vehicle packaging a challenge. Today’s diesel engines require valvetrain lash adjustment settings at distinct intervals to ensure proper valvetrain performance. This requires removing the engine rocker cover to access the valvetrain rocker arms for setting lash. Setting lash for compact vehicle applications sometimes requires removing the aftertreatment system to provide access to the rocker cover prior to setting lash. Then, the rocker cover is reinstalled followed by the aftertreatment system making the lash setting process time consuming and complex.