Search Results

After the COVID-19 pandemic, leisure activities and cultures have undergone significant transformations. Particularly, there has been an increased demand for outdoor camping. Consequently, the need for capabilities that allow vehicles to navigate not only paved roads but also unpaved and rugged terrains has arisen. In this study, we aim to address this demand by utilizing AI to introduce a 'Stuck Probability Estimation Algorithm' for vehicles on off-road. To estimate the 'Stuck Probability' of a vehicle, a mathematical model representing vehicle behavior is essential. The behavior of off-road driving vehicles can be characterized in two main aspects: firstly, the harshness of the terrain (how uneven and rugged it is), and secondly, the extent of wheel slip affecting the vehicle's traction.

Recently, as part of the effort to enhance fuel efficiency and reduce costs for eco-friendly vehicles, the R-gearless system has been implemented in the TMED (P)HEV system. Due to the removal of the reverse gear, a distinct backward driving method needs to be developed, allowing the Electronic Motor (e-Motor) system to facilitate backward movement in the TMED (P)HEV system. However, the capability of backward driving with the e-Motor is limited because of partial failure in the high-voltage system of an R-gearless system. Thus, we demonstrate that it is possible to improve backward driving problems by applying a new fail-safe strategy. In the event of a high-voltage battery system failure, backward driving can be achieved using the e-Motor with constant voltage control by the Hybrid Starter Generator (HSG), as proposed in this study.

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.

A need to develop a cooling method with high cooling performance like jet impingement is increased as high power of an inverter is required. Jet Impingement on the dimpled plate would increase thermal performance than that of flat plate. Many previous researchers have dealt with the multi jet impingement on flat plate and some results of the study on dimpled plate evaluate the effect on heat transfer coefficients on several limited cases, making it difficult to apply them to inverter designs. Therefore, in this paper, heat transfer performance, pressure drop, and robustness at micro-scale of jet impingement on the dimpled plate were investigated in detail and the correlations of each performance were proposed. Finally, the optimal design was presented. The cooling performance was influenced by the jet array and the effect of depth and width of the dimples.

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.

Platoon is a system that connects vehicles through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology to maintain a short distance between vehicles while driving on the road. To improve fuel efficiency, many automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are interested in developing and demonstrating real-world platoon system. However, it is hard for heavy duty trucks to develop this system due to the difficulty of maintaining the targeted intervehicle distance not only for fuel efficiency but also for safety in case of emergency braking. Because of this critical safety issue in the emergency situation, the platoon system for heavy duty trucks can be hardly demonstrated or tested in real vehicle environment. The relatively complex system and the slow response characteristic of commercial vehicles makes this even more difficult.

Recently, increasing system complexity and various customer demands result in the need for highly efficient vehicle development processes. Once the brake torque is predicted accurately during the driving scenario in the earlier stage, it will be able to prevent the changing the vehicle or brake system design to satisfy the legal regulation and customer requirement. As brake torque performance target allocate brake pad friction coefficient level and characteristic, the accurate friction coefficient prediction should be preceded for accurate prediction for brake torque. Generally, the friction coefficient of the brake pad is known to vary nonlinearly depending on the physical properties of the disc and the pad, as well as the brake disc rotational speed, the disc temperature, and the hydraulic pressure. Furthermore, it varies depending on the driving scenario even when other conditions are the same. Therefore, it is necessary to apply new methods to solve these challenges.

With the spread of new trends such as autonomous driving and vehicle subscription service, drivers may pay less attention to the maintenance of the vehicle. Brake pads being safety critical components, the wear condition of all service brakes is required by regulation to be indicated by either acoustic of optical devices or a means of visually checking the degree of brake lining wear [1]. Current application of the wear indicator in the market uses either sound generating metal strip or wire harness based pad wear sensor. The former is not effective in generating clear alarm to the driver, and the latter is not cost effective, and there is a need for more effective and low cost solution. In this paper, a pad wear monitoring system using MOC(Motor On Caliper) EPB(Electric Parking Brake) ECU is proposed. An MOC EPB is equipped with a motor, geartrain and an ECU. The motor current when applying the parking brake is influenced by the mechanical load at the brake pad side of the system.

This paper presents an integrated control of in-wheel motor (IWM) and electronic limited slip differential (eLSD) to enhance the vehicle lateral stability and maneuverability. The two actuators are utilized in the proposed controller to achieve separate purposes. The IWM controller is designed to modify the understeer gradient for enhanced handling characteristic and maneuverability. The eLSD controller is devised to improve the lateral stability to prevent oversteer in a severe maneuver. The proposed controller consists of a supervisor, upper-level controller and lower-level controller. The supervisor determines a target motion based on a target understeer gradient for IWM control and a yaw rate reference for eLSD control. The upper-level controller generates a desired yaw moment for the target motion. In the lower-level controller, the desired yaw moment is converted to the control inputs for IWMs in the two front wheels and eLSD at the rear axle.

This paper presents the research related to the self-driving system that has been actively carried out recently. Previous studies have been limited to ensure the path following performance in linear and steady state-alike handling region with small lateral acceleration. However, in the high speed driving, the vehicle cornering response is extended to nonlinear region where tire grips are saturated. This requires a technology to create the driving path for minimum time maneuvering while grasping the tire grip limits of the vehicle in real time. The entire controller consists of three stages-hierarchy: The target motion is determined in the supervisor phase, and the target force to follow the target behavior is calculated in the upper stage controller. Finally, the lower stage controller calculates the actuator phase control input corresponding to the target force.

Body-in-white plays a key role in protecting passengers in the event of collision between vehicles, and also endures external forces during cornering in a vehicle. Stiffness of body-in-white is the basic characteristic of a car body, and it is closely related to the full-vehicle-level performance such as body durability, ride and handling, etc. There have been many attempts to correlate body stiffness to full-vehicle-level performance, and studying the relationship between torsional body stiffness and durability has been the popular topic among others. In general, it is believed to be true that bodies with high torsional stiffness exhibit good durability performance, and in many cases this assumption seems to be verified. However, not all cases are true to this assumption. In this paper, relationship between torsional body stiffness and body durability has been closely studied.

An experimental study was conducted on a multi-cylinder engine to understand the feasibility of a six-stroke homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) operation under stoichiometric conditions. State-of-the-art technologies such as continuously variable valve duration (CVVD) and high-pressure gasoline direct injection (GDI) were experimentally exploited to increase the degree of freedom of engine control. The motivation of six-stroke HCCI combustion is to remedy the load limitation and the cyclic variation in four-stroke HCCI combustion with two additional strokes: compression and expansion strokes. The six-stroke HCCI combustion occurs in the following order. First, hot residual gas is trapped by applying negative valve overlap (NVO). Next, fresh air enters, fuel is injected, and lean HCCI combustion occurs in the 1st power stroke (PS). Subsequently, additional fuel is injected, and the 2nd combustion occurs with the remaining oxygen in the two additional strokes.

As global emission standards are becoming more stringent, it is necessary to increase thermal efficiency through the high compression ratio in spark-ignited engines. Various studies are being conducted to mitigate knocking caused by an increased compression ratio, which requires an understanding of the combustion phenomena inside the combustion chamber. In particular, the in-cylinder flow is a major factor affecting the entire combustion process from the generation to the propagation of flames. In the field of spark-ignited engine research, where interest in the concept of lean combustion and the expansion of the EGR supply is increasing, flow analysis is essential to ensure a rapid flame propagation speed and stable combustion process. In this study, the flow around the spark plug was measured by the Laser Doppler Velocimetry system, and the correlation with combustion in spark-ignited engines was analyzed.

In commercial vehicles, the exhaust brake assists the service brake to share the excess load and is used as an auxiliary brake to assist with the safety of the engine and the service brake on downhill slopes. To meet the customer's demand for auxiliary brakes, the specification of auxiliary brakes must be determined at the product proposal stage. In this study, performance design was conducted to derive exhaust brake specifications that fit the customer's requirements. For performance design, a system model was created and key design factors with high performance contribution were extracted. Optimal specifications were derived from parameter studies for key design factors. Additionally, performance analysis was performed with design tolerances using the performance design model. Performance was verified through actual vehicle evaluation and design specifications were confirmed.

In this study, the preliminary validation method of the steering system is constructed and the objective is to satisfy the target performance in the conceptual design stage for minimizing the problems after the detailed design. The first consideration about steering system is how to extract the reliable steering effort for parking. The tire model commonly used in MBD(Multi-Body Dynamics) has limited ability to represent deformations under heavy loads. Therefore, it is necessary to study adequate tire model to simulate the behavior due to the large deformation and friction between the ground and the tire. The two approaches related with F tire model and mathematical model are used. The second is how to extract each link’s load in the conceptual design stage. Until now, each link’s load could be derived only by actual vehicle test, and a durability analysis was performed using only pre-settled RIG test conditions.

The high speed continuous braking distance assessment is the worst condition for thermal fades. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between fade characteristic and friction materials & brake fluid amount for improving braking distance. So, we used the dynamometer to measure the friction coefficient, braking distance and required brake fluid amount. Through the measurements, the research was carried out as follows. First of all, we studied the influence of friction coefficient about different shapes (chamfer shape, area of the friction material, number of slots) on the same friction material. Secondly, we knew the effects of braking distance by the shape of the friction material. Through these two studies, the shape of the friction material favorable to the fade characteristics was derived. Finally, we measured the amount of required brake fluid in caliper after 10 consecutive braking cycles through Dynamometer.

In the latest works [12], we presented the guideline for reducing Metal pick up(MPU, the main component of disc scoring) by controlling the location of the roughness of disc, the brake pad friction coefficients and the disc slot's size. In this study, the previously studied iron transfer theory to 'Cu free' brake pad and the disc surface roughness controlling methods which are based on the mass production manufacturing process are applied. It is possible to suggest the ways to improve the scoring-free disc without reducing friction coefficient between the disc and pad, and any demerit such as increased wear and airplane noise like conventional slot discs [11].

Electric Power Steering (EPS) needs to meet both functional and stability requirements, it plays significant role in controlling vehicle motion. In the meantime, customers emphasizes natural steering feel which can reflect vehicle motion and road surface information while isolate unwanted external disturbances. In general, conventional EPS control algorithms exert assist torque according to driver torque measured from torque sensor, while maintaining stability using stabilizing compensator. However, there exist significant trade-off between steering feel and stability, because the performances of assist torque control and stabilizing compensator are strongly coupled. In this paper a torque feedback control algorithm for EPS system is proposed in order to overcome the trade-off, and to achieve more natural, robust steering feel.

The integration of SCR catalyst into diesel-particulate filter (SDPF) may be one of most viable ways to meet upcoming stringent emission regulations with new test protocols such as Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycles (WLTC) and Real Driving Emissions (RDE) requirements. The chabazite-structured SSZ-13-based catalysts enabled the wide implementation of urea-SCR technology for mobile applications due to their robust thermal stability up to 750°C compared to the thermally unstable ZSM-5-based technologies. However, the thermally stable Cu-SSZ-13 catalyst starts losing its initial activity with the increase of aging time at 850°C, where the SCR catalyst on SDPF can possibly be exposed during filter regeneration under a drop-to-idle (DTI) condition. Therefore, more durable SCR catalysts that survive under higher temperatures have been strongly desired in automotive industry. Recently, we found Cu-exchanged high silica LTA revealed an excellent hydrothermal stability.