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Hydrogen is seen as a promising energy carrier for a future mobility scenario. Applied as fuel in IC engines with internal mixture formation, hydrogen opens up new vistas for the layout of the combustion system. The 3D CFD simulation of internal mixture formation as well as combustion helps to understand the complex in-cylinder processes and provides a powerful tool to optimize the engine's working cycle. The performance of standard simulation models for mixture formation as well as the performance of a user-defined combustion model applied in a commercial CFD-code is discussed within this article. The 3D CFD simulations are validated with measurements obtained from a thermodynamic and from an optical research engine respectively.

Hydrogen is frequently cited as a future energy carrier. Hydrogen allows a further optimization of internal combustion engines, especially with direct injection. In order to assess various concepts, detailed thermodynamic analyses were carried out. Effects, which can be neglected with conventional fuels (e.g. losses due to injection during compression stroke) are considered. These basics as well as several results from test bed investigations are described within this article. Wall heat losses were found to have a major influence on overall efficiency and are thus investigated in detail, based on local surface temperature measurement. Finally, concepts that allow an increase in engine efficiency and lowest NOx emissions are demonstrated.

Due to the increasing number of minivans and sport utility vehicles, rollovers have become more significant. As a result, various accident reconstruction programs have been developed to address this issue. To reconstruct rollover crashes, various requirements have to be fulfilled. These consist of: providing a simple method that is able to model three dimensional environments that often play a major role in rollovers. including suspension, tire and collision models must be provided. This is particularily important in the rollover initiation phase. including proper vehicle geometry and contact stiffness must be available. These are important for simulation of body contacts that affect the vehicle motion. This study focuses on one program, PC-CRASH. This program was developed to allow simulations of vehicle 3-dimensional movements before, during and after the impact. The study also discusses the physical background of the models, their capabilities as well as their limitations.

An efficient and economic method to increase the performance of four stroke engines can be accomplished by utilizing the crankcase supercharging method. The lubrication of the movable parts in the crankcase by mixing the intake air with lubricant leads to a high oil consumption and disadvantages in the emission characteristics. This paper describes parts of a research project with the goal to develop a supercharged four–stroke engine with a closed loop lubrication system for the crank train and the cylinder head. The thermodynamic layout and the development of an oil separating system have been carried out with the help of simulation tools and development work on a flow test bench.

Focus is pointed on the highly favorable physical properties of hydrogen (H2) with regard to its combustion characteristics in internal combustion engines. Thereby it will be shown in how far the performance of next generation hydrogen engines can be improved by implementing a direct fuel injection system instead of the conventional port injection approach. Results from numerical as well as from experimental investigations will be used to clearly give a vision of the overall future potential of hydrogen for combustion engines in comparison to fuel cell systems.

The greenhouse gas emission reduction targets agreed at Kyoto represent a first step to reduce emissions in the long term in order to stabilize the earth's climate. The European Union has made an important contribution to the Kyoto agreement and the European Commission intends to develop a strategy to reach the Union's Kyoto target. This will require action in all sectors of the economy including the transport sector. Of the six gases covered by the Kyoto protocol, carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important as it accounts for about 80% of the total global warming potential of all six greenhouse gases. In the European Union, the share of transport CO2 emissions in total increased from 19% in 1985 to 26% in 1995. Road traffic is the most important source, and largely determines the trend in the transport sector; and road freight accounts for about 35% of transport CO2 emissions. As well as CO2, road freight transport causes considerable amounts of other pollutant emissions.

Measurements of ultrafine particles (diameter < 300 nm) and total suspended particulates (TSP) were performed in 2 tunnels (Lundby, Gothenborg, S, and Plabutsch, Graz, A). The measurements in the Lundby tunnel were performed directly in the tunnel tube at the roadside whereas the measurements at the Plabutsch tunnel took place at the top of a 90 m high ventilation shaft. There was good correlation for all diameters (7.91 nm - 300 nm) between ultrafine particles and TSP for the measurements at the Lundby tunnel. At the Plabutsch site a correlation between ultrafine particles and TSP was detected only for particles > 35 nm. The maximum of the particle size distribution function for Lundby was at 30 nm and for the Plabutsch tunnel at 80 nm.

The pedestrian model in PC-Crash is based on a multi-body system, where several bodies are interconnected by joints. Each of these bodies can have different properties to represent the different parts of the human body. The joint properties can be specified independently as well. The theoretical background of the pedestrian model has been introduced in SAE 1999-01-0445 and the model shows to give a good correlation of the gross movement of the pedestrian compared to crash test data. As there are many parameters, which can and have to be specified for the pedestrian model as input parameters, an in depth validation of the different parameters has to be done to validate this model. This paper describes in detail the validation process for the pedestrian model. A significant number of crash tests (approx. 30) was used as a basis to compare the results of the simulations and the real movement of the test subjects.

During recent years the accident simulation program PC-Crash was developed. This software simulates vehicle movement before, during and after the impact, using 3D vehicle and scene models. When reconstructing car accidents, quite often questions arise regarding occupant movement and loading. Especially important is the influence of different types of restraint systems on the occupant. MADYMO® is a software tool which was developed by TNO in the Netherlands and which is well known in the automotive industry for the simulation of occupant movement. It allows the simulation of all kinds of modern restraint systems such as airbags and seatbelts with and without pretensioners. As the software is used in the automotive industry quite extensively, a huge validated database of dummy and human models is available. Since MADYMO® demands the setup of quite complicated input files, its use normally requires a high level of expertise.

When vehicle to vehicle collisions are analyzed using a discrete kinetic time forward simulation, several simulation runs have to be performed, to find a solution, where post impact trajectories and rest positions correspond with the real accident. This paper describes in detail a method to vary the pre-impact parameters automatically and to evaluate the simulation results. In a first step the different pre-impact parameters are discussed. Their influence on the impact and the post impact movement is shown. Furthermore the necessary specifications to define the post crash movement are presented. The necessity to define tire marks and rest positions of the vehicles involved is outlined. An effective evaluation criteria is derived, which is used to calculate a simulation error. This error is then used as a target function to control the optimization process. Two different optimization strategies are presented.