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Recently, the environmental temperature of vehicles is changing due to the electrification of vehicles and improved internal combustion engine system to reduce carbon emissions. However, mechanical properties of plastic materials change very sensitively to environmental temperature changes, and mechanical properties decrease when exposed to high temperatures. Therefore, it is important to estimate lifespan estimation of plastic parts according to temperature changes. In this paper, reliability analysis process to estimate the maximum service temperature of plastic parts was developed using aging data of material properties, environmental condition data of automotive parts, and field driving condition data. Changes in the mechanical properties of plastic materials such as glass fiber reinforced polyamide materials were tested. The environmental exposure temperature of the vehicle and parts was measured, and the general driving pattern of the vehicle was analyzed.

Engine off control is conducted on parallel hybrid vehicles in order to reduce fuel consumption. It is efficient in terms of fuel economy, however, noise and vibration is generated on engine cranking and transferred through engine mount on every mode transition from EV to HEV. Engine crank position control has been studied in this paper in order to reduce vibration generated when next cranking starts. System modeling of an architecture composed of an engine, P1 and P2 motors has been conducted. According to the prior studies, there exists correlation between crank vibration level and the crank angle. Thus a method to locate pistons on a specific crank angle which results in a local minimum of vibration magnitude could be considered. The P1 motor facilitates this crank position control when engine turns off, for its location directly mounted on a crankshaft allows the system model to obtain more precise crank position estimation and improved linearity in torque control as well.

To improve the fuel efficiency and satisfy the strict emission regulations, the development of internal combustion engine gets more complicated in both hardware and software perspectives, and the margins for durability and NVH quality become narrower, which could result in poor NVH robustness in harsh engine operating conditions. In this paper, we investigate experimentally the camshaft impact noise mechanism relating the valve train and timing chain forces to detailed motion of the camshaft and the chain tensioner. After the initial investigation of identifying the impact timings and specific engine operating points when the noise occurs, the camshaft orbital motion inside of the sliding bearing is measured and visualized with the proximity sensors with calibration after sensor mounting, in addition to the chain tensioner movements.

As the carbon neutrality to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has become a global movement, the development of power sources using carbon-free fuels is an essential task for the industry. Accordingly, many companies in various fields that need carbon reduction are striving to develop power sources and build energy value chains using carbon-free or carbon-neutral fuels such as hydrogen and E-fuel. Ammonia, which is also a carbon-free fuel, stands as an efficient energy vector delivering high energy density and flexibility in transportation and storage, capable of mitigating hydrogen’s key drawbacks. However, difficulty of controlling combustion of ammonia due to its fuel characteristics limited the development of internal combustion engines using ammonia to the basic research stage in the limited operating conditions. Hyundai Motor Company presents the development of ammonia fueled 4-cylinder SI engine using direct injection strategy, designed based on 2.5L LPG T-DI engine.

This research addresses the pressing need for reducing vehicle aerodynamic resistance, with a specific focus on mitigating wheel and tire resistance, which constitutes approximately 25% of the overall vehicle drag. While the prevailing method for reducing resistance in mass production development involves wheel opening reduction, it inadvertently increases wheel weight and has adverse effects on brake cooling performance. To overcome these challenges, novel complementary resistance reduction methods that can be employed in conjunction with an appropriate degree of wheel opening reduction are imperative. In this study, we introduce symmetrical wheels with a fan-like shape as a solution. The fan configuration influences the surrounding flow by either drawing it in or pushing it out, depending on the direction of rotation. Application of these fan-type wheels to a vehicle's wheels results in the redirection of flow inwards or outwards during high-speed driving due to wheel rotation.

The maximum thermal efficiency of gasoline engine has been improving and recently the maximum of 40% has been achieved. In this study, the potential of further improvement on engine thermal efficiency over 40% was investigated. The effects of engine parameters on the engine thermal efficiency were evaluated while the optimization of parameters was implemented. Parameters tested in this study were compression ratio, tumble ratio, twin spark configuration, EGR rate, In/Ex cam shaft duration and component friction. Effects of each parameter on fuel consumption reduction were discussed with experimental results. For the engine optimization, compression ratio was found to be 14, at which the best BSFC without knock and combustion phasing retardation near sweet spot area was showed. Highly diluted combustion was applied with high EGR rate up to 35% for the knock mitigation.

In this study, the effect of the nozzle tip geometry on the nozzle tip wetting and particulate emissions was investigated. Various designs for the injector nozzle hole were newly developed for this study, focusing on the step hole geometry to reduce the nozzle tip wetting. The laser induced fluorescence technique was applied to evaluate the fuel wetting on the nozzle tip. A vehicle test and an emissions measurement in a Chassi-Dynamo were performed to investigate the particulate emission characteristics for injector nozzle designs. In addition, the in-cylinder combustion light signal measurement by the optical fiber sensor was conducted to observe diffusion combustion behavior during the vehicle test. Results showed that the step hole surface area is strongly related to nozzle tip wetting and particulate emissions characteristics. Injectors without the step hole and with a smaller step hole geometry showed significant reduction of nozzle tip wetting and number of particulate emissions.

Optimizing fuel injection spray is essential to comply with stringent future emission regulations for hybrid vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles, and the spray characteristics and geometry must be robust for various engine operating conditions. This study presents experimental and numerical assessments of spray for lateral-mounted gasoline direct injection (GDI) sprays with different plume arrangements to analyze collapse characteristics, which can significantly deteriorate the geometry and characteristics of fuel sprays. Novel spray characterization methods are applied to analyze complex spray collapse behaviors using LED-based diffusive back-illuminated extinction imaging (DBIEI) and 3D computed tomographic (CT) image reconstruction. High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed to analyze the detailed spray characteristics besides experimental characterization.