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The automotive thermal management system is responsible for maintaining engine and passenger compartment temperatures, which promote normal combustion events and passenger comfort. This system traditionally circulates a water ethylene glycol mixture through the engine block using a belt-driven water pump, wax pellet thermostat valve, radiator with electric fan, and heater core. Although vehicle cooling system performance has been reliable and acceptable for many decades, advances in mechatronics have permitted upgrades to powertrain and chassis components. In a similar spirit, the introduction of a variable speed electric water pump and servo-motor thermostat valve allows ECU-based thermal control. This paper examines the integration of an electric water pump and intelligent thermostat valve to satisfy the engine's basic cooling requirements, minimize combustion chamber fluctuations due to engine speed changes, and permit quick heating of a cold block.

Modern development processes put architecture and design models in the center of system engineering activities. With the increasing application of software (SW) controlled functions such development processes have obtained a high significance in the automotive industry too. In addition, functional safety standards such as ISO 26262 [1] issued by International Standardization Organization (ISO) require safety analysis procedures to be tightly integrated with these engineering activities. The authors show a solution to tackle the need for such integration by using architecture and design models as a single source of information for functional safety analysis activities and methods. Moreover, a seamless round-trip approach between the activities of the system design, the requirements engineering and the functional safety analysis activities is presented.

A description is given of a control experiment aimed at the development of a computer methodology for improving the flow of traffic through the Lincoln Tunnel of New York City. Some remarks are given on the potential spin-offs from this experiment which may influence the development of other traffic control systems.

Connected vehicles provide suppliers and OEMs new opportunities to improve their customer experience and offer new services. Yet, in this new era of Internet of Things (IoT), OEMs and suppliers are expected to expand their engineering efforts beyond the vehicle itself. We present a new Rapid Application Development (RAD) service offered by IBM, called IBM Internet of Things Workbench. This is a visual tool, offered as an IBM Bluemix service that allows engineers to design and simulate the overall architecture and interactions between the various IoT entities such as devices, cloud applications and services, mobile clients and asset management systems. IoT Workbench abstracts the messaging details and generates code skeletons for the cloud applications as well as for simulating devices. It also provides the device simulation to allow for the application testing before the actual devices are available and the requirements for the various devices are validated.

The introduction of mechatronic components into thermal-mechanical systems provides an opportunity to apply real time control strategies for enhanced engine performance. The traditional automotive thermal management system contains the engine, thermostat, air cooled radiator, and centrifugal pump driven by the crankshaft belt. A servo-motor valve and pump may be inserted into the vehicle's heating/cooling system to regulate the coolant flow with the engine control unit. To study these dual actuators, a scale experimental cooling system has been investigated. This automotive inspired thermal system contains a heater, smart thermostat valve, radiator, and variable speed electric pump. A lumped parameter model has been developed to describe the system's behavioral response and establish the basis for temperature regulation. Real time control algorithms are introduced for the synchronous regulation of the valve and pump.