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This collection is a resource for studying the history of the evolving technologies that have contributed to snowmobiles becoming cleaner and quieter machines. Papers address design for a snowmobile using the EPA test procedure and standard for off-road vehicles, along with more stringent U.S. National Park Best Available Technology (BAT) standards that are likened to those of the California Air Resourced Board (CARB). Innovative technology solutions include: • Standard application for diesel engine designs • Applications to address and test both engine and track noise • Benefits of the Miller cycle and turbocharging The SAE International Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) program is an engineering design competition. The program provides undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to enhance their engineering design and project management skills by reengineering a snowmobile to reduce emissions and noise.

This collection is a resource for studying the history of the evolving technologies that have contributed to snowmobiles becoming cleaner and quieter machines. Papers address design for a snowmobile using the EPA test procedure and standard for off-road vehicles. Innovative technology solutions include: • Engine Design: improving the two-stroke, gas direct injection (GDI) engine • Applications of new muffler designs and a catalytic converter • Solving flex-fuel design and engine power problems The SAE International Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) program is an engineering design competition. The program provides undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to enhance their engineering design and project management skills by reengineering a snowmobile to reduce emissions and noise. The competition includes internal combustion engine categories that address both gasoline and diesel, as well as the zero emissions category in which range and draw bar performance are measured.

This collection is a resource for studying the history of the evolving technologies that have contributed to snowmobiles becoming cleaner and quieter machines. Papers address design for a snowmobile using E10 gasoline (10% ethanol mixed with pump gasoline). Performance technologies that are presented include: • Engine Design: application of the four-stroke engine • Applications to address both engine and track noise • Exhaust After-treatment to reduce emissions The SAE International Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) program is an engineering design competition. The program provides undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to enhance their engineering design and project management skills by reengineering a snowmobile to reduce emissions and noise. The competition includes internal combustion engine categories that address both gasoline and diesel, as well as the zero emissions category in which range and draw bar performance are measured.

Vehicles with power exporting capability are microgrids since they possess electrical power generation, onboard loads, energy storage, and the ability to interconnect. The unique load and silent watch requirements of some military vehicles make them particularly well-suited to augment stationary power grids to increase power resiliency and capability. Connecting multiple vehicles in a peer-to-peer arrangement or to a stationary grid requires scalable power management strategies to accommodate the possibly large numbers of assets. This paper describes a military ground vehicle power management scheme for vehicle-to-grid applications. The particular focus is overall fuel consumption reduction of the mixed asset inventory of military vehicles with diesel generators typically used in small unit outposts.

This paper studies model predictive control algorithm for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) energy management to improve HEV fuel economy. In this paper, Model Predictive Control (MPC), a predictive control method, is applied to improve the fuel economy of power-split HEV. A dedicated model predictive control method is developed to predict vehicle speed, battery state of charge (SOC), and engine fuel consumption. The power output from the engine, motor, and the mechanical brake will be adjusted to match driver's power request at the end of the prediction window while minimizing fuel consumption. The controller model is built on Matlab® MPC toolbox® and the simulations are based on MY04 Prius vehicle model using Autonomie®, a powertrain and fuel economy analysis software, developed by Argonne National Laboratory. The study compares the performance of MPC and conventional rule-base control methods.

High hydrocarbon (HC) emission during a cold start still remains one of the major emission control challenges for spark ignition (SI) engines in spite of about three decades of research in this area. This paper proposes a cold start HC emission control strategy based on a reduced order modeling technique. A novel singular perturbation approximation (SPA) technique, based on the balanced realization principle, is developed for a nonlinear experimentally validated cold start emission model. The SPA reduced model is then utilized in the design of a model-based sliding mode controller (SMC). The controller targets to reduce cumulative tailpipe HC emission using a combination of fuel injection, spark timing, and air throttle / idle speed controls. The results from the designed multi-input multi-output (MIMO) reduced order SMC are compared with those from a full order SMC. The results show the reduced SMC outperforms the full order SMC by reducing both engine-out and tailpipe HC emission.

Vehicle operation during cold-start powertrain conditions can have a significant impact on drivability, fuel economy and tailpipe emissions in modern passenger vehicles. As efforts continue to maximize fuel economy in passenger vehicles, considerable engineering resources are being spent in order to reduce the consumption penalties incurred shortly after engine start and during powertrain warmup while maintaining suitably low levels of tailpipe emissions. Engine downsizing, advanced transmissions and hybrid-electric architecture can each have an appreciable effect on cold-start strategy and its impact on fuel economy. This work seeks to explore the cold-start strategy of several passenger vehicles with different powertrain architectures and to understand the resulting fuel economy impact relative to warm powertrain operation. To this end, four vehicles were chosen with different powertrain architectures.

The ability to operate a spark-ignition (SI) engine near the knock limit provides a net reduction of engine fuel consumption. This work presents a real-time knock control system based on stochastic knock detection (SKD) algorithm. The real-time stochastic knock control (SKC) system is developed in MATLAB Simulink, and the SKC software is integrated with the production engine control strategy through ATI's No-Hooks. The SKC system collects the stochastic knock information and estimates the knock level based on the distribution of knock intensities fitting to a log-normal (LN) distribution. A desired knock level reference table is created under various engine speeds and loads, which allows the SKC to adapt to changing engine operating conditions. In SKC system, knock factor (KF) is an indicator of the knock intensity level. The KF is estimated by a weighted discrete FIR filter in real-time.

Aluminum based brake rotors have been a priority research topic in the DOE 1999 Aluminum Industry Roadmap for the Automobile Market. After fourteen years, no satisfactory technology has been developed to solve the problem of aluminum's low working temperatures except the steel clad aluminum (SCA) brake technology. This technology research started at Michigan Technological University (MTU) in 2001 and has matured recently for commercial productions. The SCA brake rotor has a solid body and replaces the traditional convective cooling of a vented rotor with conductive cooling to a connected aluminum wheel. Much lower temperatures result with the aluminum wheel acting as a great heat sink/radiator. The steel cladding further increases the capability of the SCA rotor to withstand higher surface temperatures. During the road tests of SCA rotors on three cars, significant gas mileage improvement was found; primarily attributed to the unique capability of the SCA rotor on pad drag reduction.

Energy management is one of the key challenges for the development of Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) due to its complex powertrain structure. Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation provides an open software architecture which enables rapid prototyping HEV energy management system. This paper presents the investigation of the energy management system for a single shaft parallel hybrid electric vehicle using dSPACE eDrive HIL system. The parallel hybrid electric vehicle, energy management system, and low-level Electronic Control Unit (ECU) were modeled using dSPACE Automotive Simulation Models and dSPACE blocksets. Vehicle energy management is achieved by a vehicle-level controller called hybrid ECU, which controls vehicle operation mode and torque distribution among Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and electric motor. The individual powertrain components such as ICE, electric motor, and transmission are controlled by low-level ECUs.

Battery management system (BMS) plays a key role in the power management of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). It measures the state of charge (SOC), state of health (SOH) of the battery, protects the battery package and extends cells' life cycles. For HEV applications, lithium-ion battery is usually selected as electric power source due to its high specific energy, high energy density, and long life cycle. However, the non-linear characteristic of a Li-ion battery, complicated electro-chemical model, and environmental factors, raises the difficulties in the real-time estimation of the SOC for a Li-ion battery. To address this challenge, a BMS for HEVs is modeled with MATLAB/Simulink. In addition, a regenerative braking control strategy is proposed to determine the magnitude of the regenerative torque based on the battery SOC.

Lookup tables and functions are widely used in real-time embedded automotive applications to conserve scarce processor resources. To minimize the resource utilization, these lookup tables (LUTs) commonly use custom data structures. The lookup function code is optimized to process these custom data structures. The legacy routines for these lookup functions are very efficient and have been in production for many years. These lookup functions and the corresponding data structures are typically used for calibration tables. The third-party calibration tools are specifically tailored to support these custom data structures. These tools assist the calibrators in optimizing the control algorithm performance for the targeted environment for production. Application software typically contains a mix of both automatically generated software and manually developed code. Some of the same calibration tables may be used in both auto generated and hand-code [ 1 ] [ 2 ].

Environmental awareness and fuel economy legislation has resulted in greater emphasis on developing more fuel efficient vehicles. As such, achieving fuel economy improvements has become a top priority in the automotive field. Companies are constantly investigating and developing new advanced technologies, such as hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, improved turbo-charged gasoline direct injection engines, new efficient powershift transmissions, and lighter weight vehicles. In addition, significant research and development is being performed on energy management control systems that can improve fuel economy of vehicles. Another area of research for improving fuel economy and environmental awareness is based on improving the customer's driving behavior and style without significantly impacting the driver's expectations and requirements.

In this paper, the conversion of a production SUV to a hybrid electric vehicle with a drive system utilizing a planetary power-split transmission is presented. The uniqueness of this design comes from its ability to couple the advantages of a parallel hybrid with the advantages of a series hybrid. Depending on operating conditions and recent operating history, the drive system transitions to one of several driving modes. The drive system consists of a planetary gear set coupled to an alternator, motor, and internal combustion engine. It performs the power-split operation without the need for belt drives or clutching devices. The effects on driveability, manufacturing, fuel economy, emissions, and performance are presented along with the design, selection, and implementation of all of the vehicle conversion components.

The successful implementation of a clean, quiet, four-stroke engine into an existing snowmobile chassis has been achieved. The snowmobile is easy to start, easy to drive and environmentally friendly. The following paper describes the conversion process in detail with actual engine test data. The hydrocarbon emissions of the new, four-stroke snowmobile are 98% lower than current, production, two-stroke models. The noise production of the four-stroke snowmobile was 68 dBA during an independent wide open throttle acceleration test. If the four-stroke snowmobile were to replace all current, two-stroke snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park (YNP), the vehicles would only produce 16% of the combined automobile and snowmobile hydrocarbon emissions compared to the current 93% produced by two-stroke snowmobiles.

A thermal management system for heavy duty diesel engines is presented for maintaining acceptable and constant engine temperatures over a wide range of operational conditions. It consists of a computer controlled variable speed coolant pump, a position controlled thermostat, and a model-based control strategy. An experimentally validated, diesel engine cooling system simulation was used to demonstrate the thermal management system's capability to reduce power consumption. The controller was evaluated using a variety of operating scenarios across a wide range of loads, vehicle speeds, and ambient temperatures. Three metrics were used to assess the effects of the computer controlled system: engine temperature, energy savings, and cab temperature. The proposed control system provided very good control over the engine coolant temperatures while maintaining engine metal temperatures within a desired range.

The following paper discusses alternative strategies for reducing noise and emission production from a two-stroke snowmobile. Electric, two-stroke and four-stroke solutions were analyzed and considered for entry in the Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) 2000. A two-stroke solution was utilized primarily due to time constraints. Complete snowmobile competition results are provided. The electric solution, while the most effective at reducing emissions, is negatively impacted by weight and cost. A modified two-stroke solution, limited by cost and complexity, does not provide the required improvements in emissions. A four-stroke solution reduces noise and emissions and provides an acceptable trade-off between noise, emissions, performance and cost.

This paper details the computer algorithm which was developed to determine the A/C refrigeration circuit balance point under the system transient operating conditions. The A/C circuit model consisting of major component submodels, such as the evaporator, compressor, condenser, orifice, air handling system, and connecting hoses, are included in the study. Pressure drop and thermal capacity for the evaporator, condenser, and connecting ducts/hoses are also considered in the simulation. The results obtained from the simulation model are in good agreement with the experimental data. Users can take advantage of this CAE tool to optimize the A/C system design and to minimize the development process with time-saving and cost-effective perspectives.

The Vehicle Engine Cooling System Simulation (VECSS) computer code has been developed at the Michigan Technological University to simulate the thermal response of a cooling system for an on-highway heavy duty diesel powered truck under steady and transient operation. In Part 1 of this research, the code development and verification has been presented. The revised and enhanced VECSS (version 8.1) software is capable of simulating in real-time a Freightliner FLD 120 truck with a Detroit Diesel Series 60 engine, Behr McCord radiator, Allied signal / Garrett Automotive charge air cooler and turbocharger, Kysor DST variable speed fan clutch, DDC oil and coolant thermostat. Other cooling system components were run and compared with experimental data provided by Kysor Cooling Systems. The experimental data were collected using the Detroit Diesel Electronic Control's (DDEC) Electronic Control Module (ECM) and the Hewlett Packard (HP) data acquisition system.

A model for calculating the trap pressure drop, various particulate properties, filtration characteristics and trap temperatures was developed during the steady-state and transient cycles using the theory originated by Opris and Johnson, 1998. This model was validated with the data obtained from the steady-state cycles run with an IBIDEN SiC diesel particulate filter. To evaluate the trap experimental filtration efficiency, raw exhaust samples were taken upstream and downstream of the trap. A trap scaling and equivalent comparison model was developed for comparing different traps at the same volume and same filtration area. Using the model, the trap pressure drop data obtained from different traps were compared equivalently at the same trap volume and same filtration area. The pressure drop performance of the IBIDEN SiC trap compared favorably to the previously tested NoTox SiC and the Cordierite traps.