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Predominant brake noise evaluation and rating was developed many years ago and no longer fulfills the need of modern development work. An extended description of a noisy brake event (European expert group guideline EKB 3006) and a standardized test data exchange format, allowing the comparison of different source test results (EKB 3008) are presented. Today's noise rating systems are described and compared by selected examples. The paper proposes an open 4 level noise rating system (EKB 3007). It starts with simple occurrence statistics, noise rating based on sound levels, situational noise rating including duration and finally based on the human perception, described by psychoacoustics.

In a vehicle's development process, Transfer Path Analysis (TPA) is commonly used for identifying sound sources and their transmission to a receiver. Forces acting on the structure are the reason for the structure-borne sound share of the vehicle interior noise. In practice it is not possible, or too extensive, to measure operational forces directly. Instead, they are often calculated indirectly from accelerations and from additionally measured inertances. As the car body is a strongly coupled system, a force acting at one position results in accelerations throughout the structure. This crosstalk must be considered by using a dense inertance matrix consisting of the ratios between each force excitation and the accelerations at every sensor position. Then a matrix inversion is performed to solve the system of equations describing the coupling of the structure.

Acoustics and vibrations are amongst the foremost indicators in perceiving the quality of drive units. Analyzing these factors is vital for improve the performances of electro-mechanical systems. This paper deals with the study of vibro-acoustic behavior concerning the drivetrain components using system modeling and Finite Element calculations. A generic simulation methodology within system modeling is proposed enabling the vibro-acoustic simulation of electro-mechanical drivetrains. Excitations for these systems mostly arise from the electric motor and mechanical gears. The paper initially depicts the system model for gear whining considering the associated nonlinearities of the mesh. The results obtained from the gear mesh submodel, together with the excitations resulting from the motor, aid in the comprehension of the forces at the bearings and of the vibrations at the housings.

For many years in vehicle and other product noise assessments, tonality measurement procedures such as the Tone-to-Noise Ratio, Prominence Ratio and DIN 45681 Tonality have been available to quantify the audibility of prominent tones. Especially through the recent past as product sound pressure levels have become lower, disagreements between perceptions and measurements have increased across a wide range of product categories including automotive, Information Technology and residential products. One factor is that tonality perceptions are caused by spectrally-elevated noise bands of various widths and slopes as well as by pure tones, and usually escape measure in extant tools. Near-superpositions of discrete tones and elevated narrow noise bands are increasingly found in low-level technical sounds. Existing pure-tone methodologies tend to misrecognize an elevated noise band as general masking lowering the audibility of a tone in the measured vicinity, whereas perceptually they add.

This paper looks at the underlying fundamentals of diesel fuel system lubrication for the highly-loaded contacts found in fuel injection equipment like high-pressure pumps. These types of contacts are already occurring in modern systems and their severity is likely to increase in future applications due to the requirement for increased fuel pressure. The aim of the work was to characterise the tribological behavior of these contacts when lubricated with diesel fuel and diesel fuel treated with lubricity additives and model nitrogen and sulphur compounds of different chemical composition. It is essential to understand the role of diesel fuel and of lubricity additives to ensure that future, more severely-loaded systems, will be free of any wear problem in the field.

The powertrain noise of cars has been reduced in the last decades. Therefore in many cases, rolling tires have increasingly become the dominant sources of vehicles' interior noise. For sound design or a reduction of tire-road noise it is important to know the individual noise shares of the tires and their transfer paths. Authentic tire-road noise can only be measured on a real road, not on a roller dynamometer. So far measurements have been performed during a coast-down on the road with the engine switched off, avoiding the influence of engine noise. Operational Transfer Path Analysis (OTPA) can be used to remove the uncorrelated wind noise, and to synthesize structure-borne and airborne tire-road noise based on input signals measured with microphones at the tires and a triaxial accelerometer at each wheel carrier. Simultaneously, the interior noise is recorded by an artificial head.

Interior vehicle sound is an important factor for customer satisfaction. To achieve an optimized product sound at an early stage of development, subjective evaluation methods as well as analysis and prediction tools must be combined to provide reliable information relevant to product quality and comfort judgments. Binaural Transfer Path Synthesis (BTPS) is a well-known method to calculate interior noise and vibrations based on multi-channel input measurements. Recent enhancements of the BTPS method enable taking into account also simulated excitations, for example engine mount vibrations calculated using MBS and/or FEM simulations, allowing the prediction of interior noise even if the engine is not available in hardware. Interactive evaluation of the generated sounds in a vibro-acoustic driving simulator helps to increase understanding of customer responses and perception of target sounds.

Diesel impulsiveness (so called Diesel knocking) present in the cabin of diesel vehicles is perceived as unpleasant because of its impulsive time structure. JD Power data clearly show the customers preference of vehicles with little Diesel knocking over those with severe knocking. Corresponding objective descriptors that reflect the customers' perception are introduced. The occurrence of such noise patterns is influenced by the combustion process itself as well as by all excited mechanical components within the power train. Further the transfer characteristics of the engine structure and various vehicle noise paths do contribute to a poor Diesel Sound Quality. It is essential that all these factors have to be considered in combination. This paper provides an overview about suitable methods and technologies, including Binaural Transfer Path Analysis and Synthesis. The potential of the approach is demonstrated by an example.

Today's wide range oxygen sensors are based on the limiting current principle, where an applied voltage induces electrochemical reactions in a ceramic cell. Since the diffusive transport of exhaust gas to the electrodes is limited by a transport barrier, the resulting electric current can be related to the exhaust gas composition. A model is presented which describes the transient transport of gas mixtures from the bulk exhaust gas to the electrodes of an oxygen sensor at variable pressure and composition. The internal structure of the transport barrier was accounted for by geometrical parameters. A variety of numerical results are compared with experimental data.

Within the scope of this work, the convective mass transfer to the zirconia sensor element of an exhaust oxygen sensor was analyzed experimentally and numerically. For the experimental setup, a heightened model of an oxygen sensor was built from Lucite® considering the similarity theory. Mass transfer is measured based on the absorption of ammonia and subsequent immediate color reaction. For the numerical investigation, a three-dimensional model of the test rig was built. To predict the flow pattern and the species transport inside the protection tubes, the commercial CFD-Code FLUENT® is used. The model for the mass transfer to the surface is implemented through user-defined functions.

Sound quality of vehicle is more and more an important product feature which significantly influences the perceived product quality. Over recent years, the broad variety of new models, which resulted in increased competition, has lead to rising customer demands with regard to NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) aspects. Apart from the indispensable troubleshooting, the acoustic engineer's scope of work is extended to NVH design engineering. Thus, innovative, ambitious measurement technologies were developed to meet these new, challenging tasks and to maintain a competitive advantage.

The development of a new method to evaluate the NVH quality of diesel combustion noise bases upon following questions by regarding typical driving modes: Driving behavior with diesel vehicles Which driving situation causes an annoying diesel combustion noise Judgment of diesel combustion noise as good or bad A suitable test course was determined to regard typical driving situations as well as the European driving behavior. Vehicles of different segments were tested on that course. The recorded driving style and the simultaneously given comments on the diesel combustion noise results to a typical driving mode linked to acoustics sensation of diesel combustion noise. The next step was to simulate this driving mode on the chassis dynamometer for acoustical measurements. The recordings of several vehicles were evaluated in listening test to identify a metric. The base of metric was objective analyses evaluating diesel combustion noise in relevant driving situations.

Vehicle interior noise consists of a superposition of broadband contributions from powertrain, wind, and tire-road noise. Tire-road noise has become increasingly important referring to overall acoustic comfort, especially for (luxury) sedans with pleasant low-noise engine sounds. An interior noise recording during a coast-down (engine switched off) contains different components: a mixture of wind along with airborne and structure-borne tire-road noise shares. Separating the mixture into these components requires appropriate algorithms and additional measurements. Therefore, structure-borne excitation signals as well as the airborne noise radiation of all four tires are measured simultaneously to an artificial head recording in the vehicle interior during a coast-down test from maximum vehicle speed to standstill.

Future emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles like Euro 4, Euro 5, US '07 require advanced engine functionality. One contribution to achieve this target is the catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxides by injection of urea water solution to the exhaust gas. An overview on a urea dosing system, also called DENOXTRONIC, is given and a dosing strategy is described.

Feeling and hearing the results of engineering decisions immediately via a “virtual car” - simultaneous engineering - can significantly shorten vehicle development time. Sound quality and discrete vibration at the driver's position may be predicted and “driven” before the first prototype is built. Although sound cannot yet be predicted in an unknown chassis, the sound and vibration behavior resulting from a new engine, never previously installed in a given vehicle, may be predicted, heard binaurally and felt in an interactive “drivable” simulation based on transfer path analysis. Such a simulation, which includes the binaural sound field and discrete vibration of steering wheel and seat, can also include wind and tire noise to determine if certain engine contributions in sound and vibration may be masked.

This study reports on laser-based diagnostics to temporally track the evolution of liquid and gaseous fuel in the cylinder of a direct injection production type Diesel engine. A two-dimensional Mie scattering technique is used to record the liquid phase and planar laser-induced fluorescence of Diesel is used to track both liquid and vaporised fuel. LIF-Signal is visible in liquid and gas phase, Mie scattering occurs only in zones where fuel droplets are present. Distinction between liquid and gaseous phase becomes therefore possible by comparing LIF- and Mie-Signals. Although the information is qualitative in nature, trends of spray evolution are accessible. Within this study a parametric variation of injection pressure, in-cylinder conditions such as gas temperature and pressure as well as piston geometry are discussed. Observations are used to identify the most sensitive parameters and to qualitatively describe the temporal evolution of the spray for real engine conditions.

Since the brake colloquium in 2004 the role of climatic conditions and their relations to noise occurrence, sound pressure level and friction coefficient level is widely discussed in the US and European working groups on brake noise. A systematic study has been started to investigate the influence of relative humidity, absolute humidity and temperature on brake noise and the corresponding friction coefficient level. In this study an enormous effort was taken to keep the influences of the brake parameters, e.g. lining material, Eigenfrequencies and dimensions of the different components as small as possible to investigate the climatic influence only. Strategic humidity and temperature levels were tested according to the Mollier-Entropy-Enthalpy-Diagram which are corresponding to the seasons in the various international regions. A regression analysis evaluates the correlation and the influence of each parameter to noise and friction coefficient level.

With the exact knowledge of the current positions of the microphones in an array and the potential noise sources, it is possible to compensate a relative motion between them. In the past, techniques exploiting this knowledge have been used successfully, e.g., for the measurement of wind turbines and airplane flyover measurement. In this paper, these ideas are applied and modified for the development of a traffic flow observation system. The main purpose of a vehicle pass by measurement is to extract the continuous noise levels of the dominant sources. With the use of advanced video processing or additional sensor information (radar, light barrier) it is possible to create a continuous tracking model of the vehicle. The scan grid in the beam forming algorithm is then recalculated to compensate the movement. In the resulting acoustic video, the vehicle is fixed and the evolution of the sound sources can be observed and auralized for psychoacoustic evaluations.

Today several international brake acceptance tests exist, like the Los Angeles City Traffic test (LACT) or the Mojacar Noise Route in Spain. During these tests noise evaluation is done subjectively by test drivers, which can cause discrepancies. Sometimes noise data are recorded and evaluated by different, mostly company-specific methods but a procedure that considers the human perception of brake squeal is missing. To fill this gap, the procedure BONI (Brake Objective Noise Index) detailed in this paper is developed based on subjective ratings acquired in hearing tests. It provides reliable prediction of squeal annoyance with high correlation to human perception.

Secondary air injection after cold start gives two effects for reduced exhaust emissions: An exothermic reaction at the hot exhaust valves occurs, which increases the temperature of the exhaust gas. It gives sufficient air to the catalyst during the cold start fuel enrichment that is necessary to prevent driveability problems. Handicaps for the wide use of air injection include space constraints, weight and price. An electrical air blower was choosen to best satisfy all these requirements. The development steps are described. The result is a three stage radialblower with extremly high revolutions of about 18000 rpm. The system configuration and the outcome are demonstrated on the new C-Class of Mercedes-Benz. The results show emission reductions higher than 50 %, while also satisfying the development goals of noise, volume, weight and cost requirements.