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Natural gas is a promising alternative fuel for internal combustion engine application due to its low carbon content and high knock resistance. Performance of natural gas engines is further improved if direct injection, high turbocharger boost level, and variable valve actuation (VVA) are adopted. Also, relevant efficiency benefits can be obtained through downsizing. However, mixture quality resulting from direct gas injection has proven to be problematic. This work aims at developing a mono-fuel small-displacement turbocharged compressed natural gas engine with side-mounted direct injector and advanced VVA system. An injector configuration was designed in order to enhance the overall engine tumble and thus overcome low penetration.

The long time needed for the application and the money involved are some of the main obstacles preventing the CNG vehicles market penetration, costs are always too high and application time always too long compared with the relatively small volumes. Besides the activities to be carried out on the original engine control system to integrate the gas system are unwelcome by the OEM as they require a re-validation of already validated components/systems. This issue became more critical since the EOBD system has been installed into the vehicles as the extremely heavy validation activity are jeopardized by the gas system and the major part of the calibration/validation work shall be repeated. A new gas control system has been developed with the aims to achieve the best performances in terms of power, driveability, emissions, without any modifications on the OEM system, very short application time and costs.

The attention to the perceived quality, e.g. the quality as it is evaluated by the final customer, is becoming more and more important for the car makers. The paper describes how such aspects of braking system feel quality, joined with brake thermal constraints and interactions with other vehicle subsystems, such as suspensions, tyres and rims, can become manageable by an engineering process. In order to do that experienced designers define: longitudinal brake performance, stability limits in braking in a turn by comparison with referenced cars; brake thermal constraints; brake system constraints due to interactions with other vehicle subsystems. For perceived quality, on the other hand, it's necessary to take a different kind of approach in order to define targets.

A new category of hypereutectic aluminum liners, made by PM route is now available on the market (SILITEC) and it is successfully applied to high-pressure die casting process to produce open deck cylinder blocks. The claimed achievable engine performances over cast-iron liners (weight saving, reduction of oil consumption, optimal heat transfer, wear and friction losses reduction) justify the interest of automotive industry in developing such a technology. The paper will present the experience and the achieved results in permanent mold gravity casting with Silitec liners, where metal flow definition and temperature distribution control make the casting technique more challenging for the manufacturing of closed deck cylinder blocks.

The AICC is an assisting system for controlling relative speed and distance between two vehicles in the same lane. The AICC system may be considered as an extension of a traditional cruise control, not only keeping a fixed speed of the vehicle, but correcting it also to that of a slower one ahead. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate the design of the intelligent cruise control system involving the automatic control of throttle position and braking systems. There is much evidence nowadays that fuzzy approaches to real problems, where the linear control theory fails or can't provide an available and robust design solution, are often the best alternative to more familiar schemes.

It has been proved from many studies and applications that, to improve fuel economy, is necessary to operate near lean limit without exceeding it, to avoid unstable engine running and resulting car surging. On this purpose, besides a precise and flexible control system, an engine stability sensor, to adopt closed loop control strategies, is needed. A research has been carried out on different measurement methodologies with the aim of developing a reliable and low cost stability sensor to be used on production cars. For this reason sensors yet applied in automotive field, like accelerometer and pick-up or oriented to this application, like ring pressure sensors, have been used. As basis of comparison the cyclic dispersion,measured with a pressure sensor inside the combustion chamber, has been considered.