RECENT successes with the use of water injection for increasing the power of aircraft engines have renewed interest in what is really an old idea. Although early tests were made with the injection of water alone, it now appears that the injection of alcohol or a mixture of alcohol and water gives superior results in many cases. Basing their predictions on the results of an extensive testing program, the authors of this paper feel that alcohol-water injection has a field of use in both aircraft and ground-vehicle engines, where it can give more power and smoother operation, with a fuel of about 12 octane numbers less than the normal engine requirement.
Characteristics analysis of hydraulically damped rubber mount (HDM) for vibration isolation in automotive powertrain is very important at the design and development stage of HDM. Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) between rubber parts and fluid flow in chambers in HDM is critical to the frequency-and amplitude-dependent characteristics of HDM. In this paper, an arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) based coupling finite element (FE) method is developed to solve fully coupling problem of FSI in HDM. A typical kind of HDM in a vehicle powertrain mounting system composed of rubber spring, two fluid chambers, fluid track and decoupler is selected to investigate performance prediction of HDM. Dynamic characteristic analysis under typical working condition are calculated and compared with experiment results. The agreeable comparison results verify the effectiveness of the presented FSI formulation and characteristic prediction approach of HDM.
The ALIS (Art Lab In Space) concept involves the delivery to orbit of a miniature art gallery featuring micro-sculptures (artefacts) that float and interact freely in weightlessness, within a deployed inflatable, attached to the International Space Station's external payload attachment site (refer to illustrations on pages 5 to 8 inclusive). The gallery is internally lit and observed through video cameras with a video downlink to a ground website, enabling the public to ‘visit’ the gallery through a website portal. The space shuttle fleet has flown well over 100 missions involving thousands of experiments and payloads, none of which has been devoted to active art. Of particular value is the approach to providing public access to space through a website link, with an obvious cultural and educational dimension. It is vital that new ways are found to attract the attention and engage the interest of the public in space if it is to prosper as a field of human endeavor.
In the framework of an EC (European Community) project EM-HAZ (Electromagnetic Hazard), an Automatic Lightning System Detection And Recording (ALISDAR) has been developed. Electrical and magnetic field measurements are the best way to characterize the lightning strike to aircraft. A finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is used to estimate the lightning current from E and H field measurements. The severity and the location of the lightning strike could be used to optimize the maintenance operations. The best location in terms of cost for the ALISDAR sensors is a dummy window. The validation of the ALISDAR system is planned through two laboratory experiments.
The purpose of this paper is three fold: to serve as a tutorial for engineers new to the field of drivetrain; to function as a reference manual for those who wish to retrieve some information on a topic they have not visited for some time; and to show the direction that four-wheel-drive technology should be taking. A brief history of four-wheel-drive is followed by some examples showing the broad range of four-wheel-drive vehicles in use today. All components of typical systems are discussed in some detail. The mechanics, function, purpose, and logic of different types of systems are described, as are their advantages and disadvantages. Handling characteristics and traction capabilities of some different systems are analyzed. A majority of the vehicles produced today have systems that simply lock all drive axles together when in four-wheel-drive mode. This limits their use to off-road or extremely slippery conditions.
Electrification of the powertrain is one of the most promising trends in the automotive industry. Among the novel architectures, this paper aims to study the latent advantages provided by in-wheel motors, particularly an All-Wheel-Drive powertrain composed by four electric machines directly connected to each wheel-hub of a high performance vehicle. Beyond the well-known packaging advantage allowed by the in-wheel motor, the presence of four independent torque sources allows more flexible and complex control strategies of torque allocation. The study explores three different control modules working simultaneously: torque vectoring, regenerative braking and energy efficiency optimization protocol. The main objectives of the project are: improving handling, measured through the lap time of the virtual driver in a simulated track, and enhance energy efficiency, assessed by the battery state of charge variation during standard events.