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In addition to the low and high beam functions, some modern headlamps also have the option of switching on only section of the high beam. The so-called adaptive high beam is intended to increase the detection distance of objects and through that drastically improve the road safety. At the same time, this function does not increase the glare for oncoming or preceding traffic. This is enabled through switching the different segments of the high beam on or off, depending on which and where other road users are recognized by the front camera. This massively increases the use of the high beam, thus increasing road safety. In this study, the increase in the detection distance of objects on a straight line is statically investigated with a test person study. Furthermore, the glare of each of these three light functions is observed.

The current automotive electronic and electrical (EE) architecture has reached a scalability limit and in order to adapt to the new and upcoming requirements, novel automotive EE architectures are currently being investigated to support: a) an Ethernet backbone, b) consolidation of hardware capabilities leading to a centralized architecture from an existing distributed architecture, c) optimization of wiring to reduce cost, and d) adaptation of service-oriented software architectures. These requirements lead to the development of Zonal EE architectures as a possible solution that require appropriate adaptation of used security mechanisms and the corresponding utilized hardware trust anchors. 1 The current architecture approaches (ECU internal and in-vehicle networking) are being pushed to their limits, simultaneously, the current embedded security solutions also seem to reveal their limitations due to an increase in connectivity.

1. The present work introduces an approach for the analysis of the noise propagation behavior of mechatronic brake systems in modern passenger vehicles. While on the one hand, the number of features realized through the mechatronic brake system is strongly increasing; on the other hand, a continuous reduction of the overall vehicle interior noise level can be observed. This leads to an increase of interfering noise phenomena in the vehicle interior that customers might perceive as insufficient product quality. Therefore, noise elimination always plays an important role in vehicle development. The mechatronic brake system induces interfering noise that is transferred into the vehicle interior, differing from vehicle to vehicle and maneuver to maneuver. Supposedly, a wide frequency range, numerous components, and various branched transfer paths in the physical domains of airborne, structure-borne, and fluid-borne sound are involved in the noise propagation.

The electrification of the powertrain and the thereto related recuperation of the electric engine saves the energy in the battery and thus reduces the thermally dissipated brake energy, which leads to lower brake rotor temperatures compared to combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). These new conditions enable to reconsider brake disc concepts. Including lightweight design in heavy battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and the increasingly reliant corrosion resistance of brake rotors, Aluminum is a promising approach for new brake disc concepts. In the past, Aluminum brake disc concepts have already been deployed. For instance Aluminum Metal-Matrix Composite (Al-MMC) concepts in the Lotus Elise S1 and on the rear axle of the Volvo V40 [1]. The presented concept is a different approach and separates the friction system from the bulk Aluminum brake disc, achieved by coating of the friction rings.

In recent years, driving simulators have become a valuable tool in the automotive design and testing process. Yet, in the field of vehicle dynamics, most decisions are still based on test drives in real cars. One reason for this situation can be found in the fact that many driving simulators do not allow the driver to evaluate the handling qualities of a simulated vehicle. In a driving simulator, the motion cueing algorithm tries to represent the vehicle motion within the constrained motion envelope of the motion platform. By nature, this process leads to so called false cues where the motion of the platform is not in phase or moving in a different direction with respect to the vehicle motion. In a driving simulator with classical filter-based motion cueing, false cues make it considerably more difficult for the driver to rate vehicle dynamics.

The aim of this investigation is the improvement of the lateral vehicle dynamics by optimizing the rim width. For that purpose, the rim width is considered as a development tool and configured with regard to specified targets. Using a specifically developed method of simulation, the influence of the rim width is analysed within different levels - starting at the component level “tyre” and going up to the level of the whole vehicle. With the help of substantial simulations using a nonlinear two-track model, the dimensioning of the rim width is brought to an optimum. Based on both, tyre and vehicle measurements, the theoretical studies can be proved in practice. As a result, the rim width has a strong influence on the behaviour of the tyre as well as on the overall vehicle performance, which emphasises its importance as a potential development tool within the development of a chassis.

With the increasing complexity of electronic vehicle systems, one particular “gap” between function development and ECU integration becomes more and more apparent, and critical; albeit not new. The core of the problem is: as more functions are integrated and share the same E/E resources, they increasingly mutually influence and disturb each other in terms of memory, peripherals, and also timing and performance. This has two consequences: The amount of timing-related errors increases (because of the disturbance) and it becomes more difficult to find root causes of timing errors (because of the mutual influences). This calls for more systematic methods to deal with timing requirements in general and their transformation from function timing requirements to software architecture timing requirements in particular.

In current research projects such as "Vehicle to Grid" (V2G), "Vehicle to Building" (V2B) or "Vehicle to Home" (V2H), plug-in vehicles are integrated into stationary energy systems. V2B or V2H therefore stands for intelligent networking between vehicles and buildings. However, in these projects the objective is mostly from a pure electric point of view, to smooth the load profile on a household level by optimized charging and discharging of electric vehicles. In the present paper a small energy system of this kind, consisting of a building and a vehicle, is investigated from a holistic point of view. Thermal as well as electrical system components are taken into account and there is a focus on reduction of overall energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. A predictive energy management is presented that coordinates the integration of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle into the energy systems of a building. System operation is optimized in terms of energy consumption and CO₂ emissions.

More electronic vehicle functions lead to an exponentially growing degree of software integration in automotive ECUs. We are seeing an increasing number of ECUs with mixed criticality software. ISO26262 describes different safety requirements, including freedom from interference and absence from error propagation for the software. These requirements mandate particular attention for mixed-criticality ECUs. In this paper we investigate the ability to guarantee that these safety requirements will be fulfilled by using established (deadline monitoring) and new error detection mechanisms (execution time monitoring). We also show how these methods can be used to build up safe and efficient schedules for today's and future automotive embedded real time systems with mixed criticality software.

To significantly increase fuel efficiency while keeping power and performance of its signature S models, AUDI developed a new 4.0 TFSI engine with Cylinder on Demand technology and introduced it with its new S6, S7 and S8 models. To manage upcoming NVH issues due to this new technology and keep the intended sporty V8 note of the engine under all operating conditions, a broad range of new and advanced technologies was introduced with these vehicles. This paper focusses on the Active Noise Control system and its development. It describes the ANC system from a control theory perspective in addition to the acoustical perspective. Special features of the system include the availability of multiple tunings (4/8 cylinder mode) to support the specific overall sound character and the fast switching process as switching between different cylinder configurations might be as fast as 300 ms. In addition, the system also includes specific features that allow an advanced audio system diagnosis.

Hybrid vehicle simulation methods combine physical test articles (vehicles, suspensions, etc.) with complementary virtual vehicle components and virtual road and driver inputs to simulate the actual vehicle operating environment. Using appropriate components, hybrid simulation offers the possibility to develop more accurate physical tests earlier, and at lower cost, than possible with conventional test methods. MTS Systems has developed Hybrid System Response Convergence (HSRC), a hybrid simulation method that can utilize existing durability test systems and detailed non-real-time virtual component models to create an accurate full-vehicle simulation test without requiring road load data acquisition. MTS Systems and Audi AG have recently completed a joint evaluation project for the HSRC hybrid simulation method using an MTS 329 road simulator at the Audi facility in Ingolstadt, Germany.

Electric vehicles differ from conventionally powered vehicles in terms of many characteristics that are directly relevant to the customer. The most evident ones are the total driving range, which is limited by the battery capacity, and the different acceleration behavior, which is directly influenced by the electric motor's torque characteristics. Furthermore, there are many other vehicle characteristics, such as lateral dynamics, that are also strongly influenced by electrification. For all customer-relevant vehicle characteristics, it is important to know the necessary and optimal fulfillments in order to plan and evaluate new electrified vehicle concepts. Correlation functions can be used to convert values for technical characteristics to normalized customer satisfaction fulfillments. To evaluate the quality of a vehicle concept during the development process, a parametric cost function is defined.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is state of the art in the aerodynamic development process of vehicles nowadays. With increasing computer power the numerical simulations including meshing and turbulence modeling are capturing the complex geometry of vehicles and the flow field behavior around and behind a bluff body in more detail. The ultimate goal for realistic automotive simulations is to model the under-hood as well. In this study vehicle simulations using the finite volume open source CFD program OpenFOAM® are validated with own experiments on a modified generic quarter-scale SAE body with under-hood flow. A model radiator was included to take account of the pressure drop in the under-hood compartment. Force and pressure measurements around the car, total-pressure and hot-wire measurements in the car flow field and surface flow patterns were simulated and compared with the experiment.

It is the beginning of a new age: multicore technology from the PC desktop market is now also hitting the automotive domain after several years of maturation. New microcontrollers with two or more main processing cores have been announced to provide the next step change in available computing power while keeping costs and power consumption at a reasonable level. These new multicore devices should not be confused with the specialized safety microcontrollers using two redundant cores to detect possible hardware failures which are already available. Nor should they be confused with the heterogeneous multicore solutions employing an additional support core to offload a single main processing core from real-time tasks (e.g. handling peripherals).

With the increased adoption of AUTOSAR operating systems across the different automotive system domains a notable exception has been that of the safety critical systems. This domain has strict requirements on precise requirements capturing, proven design flow, robust implementation, exhaustive testing, detailed documentation and traceability, and project management processes. These requirements are normally prohibitive to adopt for commercial ‘one size fits all’ solutions due to the huge expense and resources required to meet such a strict regime. So under these constraints AUTOSAR is far from a perfect fit for safety systems. Nonetheless, the attractive features of reuse and portability still make AUTOSAR based systems highly desirable.

The ridemeter is a development tool that provides a predictive value for subjectively perceived ride quality on the basis of objective measured values. After years of preliminary investigations it was possible to make the link between the subjective driving experience and objective measured data. Intensive validation of the tool known as the ridemeter enables it to obtain meaningful results, which meet with a high degree of acceptance from the development engineer. The ridemeter is capable of providing calculated assessments for different vehicle concepts on different roads. The ridemeter is used on general road tests, on test runs on the AUDI proving ground, on our test rigs and in simulation. Areas of application include benchmark investigations, optimisation steps for suspension components and systems, and the setting out of limit values and tolerance curves in specifications for future vehicles.

For car manufacturers, seating comfort is becoming more and more important in distinguishing themselves from their competitors. There is a simultaneous demand for shorter development times and more comfortable seats. Comfort in automobile seats is a multi-dimensional and complex problem. Many current sophisticated measuring tools were consulted, but it is unclear on which factors one should concentrate attention when measuring comfort. The goal of this paper is to find a model in order to predict the overall seating discomfort based on body area ratings. Besides micro climate, the pressure distribution appears to be the most objective measure comprising with the clearest association with the subjective ratings. Therefore an analysis with three different test series was designed, allowing the variation of pressure on the seat surface. In parallel the subjects were asked to judge the local and the overall sensation.

Future applications in the automotive domain such as distributed control functions need a highly dependable communication system. The current FlexRay standard already provides high transmission speeds and addresses deterministic data communication. This paper shows how to enhance the safety properties for handling a new set of applications and speeding up the communication even more. The concept of Layered FlexRay is based on the FlexRay protocol and addresses the requirements of safety-relevant applications in a distributed communication network. An implementation of this approach is depicted with a Safety Core hardware chip. It is designed to handle the communication between the FlexRay system beneath and the application on the host CPU above, providing highly efficient data management and execution of safety functions which otherwise would have to be executed in software on the host CPU.

The term X-by-Wire is commonly used in the automotive industry to describe the notion of replacing current mechanical or hydraulic chassis and powertrain systems with pure electro-mechanical systems. The paper describes the current trends and the architecture of future chassis electronics systems. The first part of the paper covers the systems architecture of x-by-wire electronics systems. We describe the network and the software architecture in more detail. The paper also explains some of the software components, in particular the operating system and the communication layer. The second part of the paper gives a description of the current state of the development process for software intended for safety-relevant systems. A possible tool chain for this development process, current possibilities as well as limitations and challenges are described.