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It is particularly easy to get tunnel vision as a domain expert, and focus only on the improvements one could provide in their area of expertise. To make matters worse, many Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are silo-ed by domain of expertise, unconsciously promoting this single mindedness in design. Unfortunately, the successful and profitable development of a vehicle is dependent on the delicate balance of performance across many domains, involving multiple physics and departments. Taking for instance the design of a Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning (HVAC) system, the device’s primary function is to control the climate system in vehicle cabins, and more importantly to make sure that critical areas on the windshield can be defrosted in cold weather conditions within regulation time. With the advent of electric and autonomous vehicles, further importance is now also placed on the energy efficiency of the HVAC, and its noise.

As the original engine sound is usually not enough to satisfy the driver’s desire for a sporty and fascinating sound, Active Noise Control (ANC) and Active Sound Design (ASD) have been great technologies in automobiles for a long time. However, these technologies which enhance the sound of vehicles using loud speakers or electromagnetic actuators etc. lead to the increase of cost and weight due to the use of external amplifiers or actuators. This paper presents a new technology for generating a target sound by the active control of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) of a mass-production steering system. The existing steering hardware or motor is not changed, but only additional software is added. Firstly, an algorithm of this technology, called Active Sound Generation (ASG), is introduced which is compiled and included in the ECU target code. Then the high frequency noise issue and its countermeasures are presented.

The reduction of vehicle exhaust particle emissions is a success story of European legislation. Various particle number (PN) counters and calibration procedures serve as tools to enforce PN emission limits during vehicle type approval (VTA) or periodical technical inspection (PTI) of in-use vehicles. Although all devices and procedures apply to the same PN-metric, they were developed for different purposes, by different stakeholder groups and for different target costs and technical scopes. Furthermore, their calibration procedures were independently defined by different stakeholder communities. This frequently leads to comparability and interpretation issues. Systematic differences of stationary and mobile PN counters (PN-PEMS) are well-documented. New, low-cost PTI PN counters will aggravate this problem. Today, tools to directly compare different instruments are scarce.

In order to extend the operability limit of the gasoline compression ignition (GCI) engine, as an avenue for low temperature combustion (LTC) regime, the effects of parametric variations of engine operating conditions on the performance of six-stroke GCI (6S-GCI) engine cycle are numerically investigated, using an in-house 3D CFD code coupled with high-fidelity physical sub-models along with the Chemkin library. The combustion and emissions were calculated using a skeletal chemical kinetics mechanism for a 14-component gasoline surrogate fuel. Authors’ previous study highlighted the effects of the variation of injection timing and split ratio on the overall performance of 6S-GCI engine and the unique mixing-controlled burning mode of the charge mixtures during the two additional strokes. As a continuing effort, the present study details the parametric studies of initial gas temperature, boost pressure, fuel injection pressure, compression ratio, and EGR ratio.

As CO2 legislation tightens, the next generation of turbocharged gasoline engines must meet stricter emissions targets combined with increased fuel efficiency standards. Recent studies have shown that the following technologies offer significant improvements to the efficiency of turbocharged GDI engines: Miller Cycle via late intake valve closing (LIVC), low pressure loop cooled EGR (LPL EGR), port water injection (PWI), and cylinder deactivation (CDA). While these efficiency-improving technologies are individually well-understood, in this study we directly compare these technologies to each other on the same engine at a range of operating conditions and over a range of compression ratios (CR). The technologies tested are applied to a boosted and direct injected (DI) gasoline engine and evaluated both individually and combined.

As CO2 legislation tightens, the next generation of turbocharged gasoline engines must meet stricter emissions targets combined with increased fuel efficiency standards. Promising technologies under consideration are: Miller Cycle via late intake valve closing (LIVC), low pressure loop cooled exhaust gas recirculation (LPL EGR), port water injection (PWI), and cylinder deactivation (CDA). While these efficiency improving options are well-understood individually, in this study we directly compare them to each other on the same engine at a range of operating conditions and over a range of compression ratios (CR). For this purpose we undertake a comprehensive simulation of the above technology options using a GT-Power model of the engine with a kinetics based knock combustion sub-model to optimize the fuel efficiency, taking into account the total in-cylinder dilution effects, due to internal and external EGR, on the combustion.

Autonomous driving systems and connected mobility are the next big developments for the car manufacturers and their suppliers during the next decade. To achieve the high computing power needs and fulfill new upcoming requirements due to functional safety and security, heterogeneous processor architectures with a mixture of different core architectures and hardware accelerators are necessary. To tackle this new type of hardware complexity and nevertheless stay within monetary constraints, high performance computers, inspired by state of the art data center hardware, could be adapted in order to fulfill automotive quality requirements. The European Processor Initiative (EPI) research project tries to come along with that challenge for next generation semiconductors. To be as close as possible to series development needs for the next upcoming car generations, we present a hybrid semiconductor system-on-chip architecture for automotive.

In recent years, emission regulations have been getting increasingly strict. In the development of engines that comply with these regulations, in-cylinder pressure plays a fundamental role, as it is necessary to analyze combustion characteristics and control combustion-related parameters. The analysis of in-cylinder pressure data enables the modelling of exhaust emissions in which characteristic temperature can be derived from the in-cylinder pressure, and the pressure can be used for other investigations, such as optimizing efficiency and emissions through controlling combustion. Therefore, a piezoelectric pressure sensor to measure in-cylinder pressure is an essential element in the engine research field. However, it is difficult to practice the installation of this pressure sensor on all engines and on-road vehicles owing to cost issues.

Due to improvements in vehicle powertrain performance, friction material fade performance is becoming an important topic. For this reason, needs for studies to improve thermal characteristics of the brake system is increasing. Methods for improving the fade characteristics have several ways to improve the thermal characteristic of friction materials and increase disc capacity. However, increasing disc capacity(size) have some risk of weight and cost rise, and friction factor improvements in friction material tend to cause other problems, such as increasing squeal wire brush noise and increasing metal pick up on disc surface. Therefore, a slot disc study is needed to overcome the problems discussed previously. Currently, there is few research history for slot disc related to fade and metal pickup improvements.

The sliding surface of the brake friction material is not uniform but composed of random contact plateaus with a broad pressure distribution, which are known to closely related to the triggering mechanism of friction induced noise and vibrations. The non-uniform contact plateaus are attributed to the various ingredients in the friction material with a broad range of physical properties and morphology and the size and stiffness of the plateau play crucial roles in determining the friction instability. The incorporation of friction surface inhomogeneity is, therefore, crucial and has to be counted to improve the accuracy of the numerical calculation to simulate brake noise. In this study, the heterogeneous nature of the friction material surface was employed in the simulation to improve the correlation between numerical simulations and experimental results.

External Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) provides an opportunity to increase the efficiency of turbocharged spark-ignition engines. Of the competing technologies and configurations, Low-Pressure EGR (LP-EGR) is the most challenging in terms of its dynamic behavior. Only some of the stationary feasible potential can be used during dynamic engine operation. To guarantee fuel consumption-optimized engine operation with no instabilities, a load point-dependent limitation of the EGR rate or alternatively an adaptation of the operating point to the actual EGR rate is crucial. For this purpose, a precise knowledge of efficiency and combustion variance is necessary. Since the operating state includes the actual EGR rate, it has an additional dimension, which usually results in an immense measuring effort.

From an acoustical point of view, the integration of seatbelt retractors in a vehicle is a real challenge that has to be met early in the vehicle development process. The buzz and rattle noise of seat belt retractors is a weak yet disturbing interior noise. Street irregularities excite the wheels and this excitation is transferred via the car body to the mounting location of the retractor. Ultimately, the inertia sensor of the locking mechanism is also excited. This excitation can be amplified by structural resonances and generate a characteristic impact noise. The objective of this paper is to describe a simulation method for an early development phase that predicts the noise-relevant low frequency local modes and consequently the contact of the retractor with the mounting panel of the car body via the finite element method.

This paper presents the design of an additional structure based on acoustic metamaterial (AMM) for the reduction of vibro-acoustic transfer function of a car body panel. As vehicles are lighter and those engine forces are bigger recently, it has become more difficult to reduce the vibration and noise transfer through body panels by using just conventional NVH countermeasures. In this research, a new approach based on AMM is tried to reduce the vibration and noise transfer of a firewall panel. First, a unit cell structure based on the locally resonant metamaterial is devised and the unit cell’s design variables are studied to increase the wave attenuation in the stop band of a dispersion curve, where the Floquet-Bloch theorem is used to estimate the dispersion curve of a two-dimensional periodic structure. Also, the vibration transfer and the vibro-acoustic transfer are predicted in a FE model of meta-plate which is composed of a periodic system of the devised unit cell.

This paper proposes a torque tracking algorithm via steer by wire to achieve the target steering feel and proposed a modified friction model to obtain return-ability. A three dimensional reference steering wheel torque map is designed using the measurement data of the steering characteristics of the target vehicle at a transition test and a weave test. In order to track the reference steering wheel torque, a sliding mode control is used in the tracking algorithm. In addition, to achieve return-ability, the modified friction model for steer by wire is used instead of the friction model defined in the reference steering wheel torque map. The modified friction model is composed of various models according to the angular velocity. The angular velocity and the angular acceleration used in the control algorithm are estimated using a kalman filter.

Current regulatory developments aim for stricter emission limits, increased environmental protection and purification of air on a local and global scale. In order to find solutions for a cleaner combustion process, it is necessary to identify the critical components and parameters responsible for the formation of emissions. This work provides an evaluation process for particle formation during combustion of a modern direct injection engine, which can help to create new aftertreatment techniques, such as a gasoline particle filter (GPF) system, that are fit for purpose. With the advent of “real driving emission” (RDE) regulations, which include market fuels for the particulate number testing procedure, the chemical composition and overall quality of the fuel cannot be neglected in order to yield a comparable emission test within the EU and worldwide.

Voice Recognition (VR) systems have become an integral part of the infotainment systems in the current automotive industry. However, its recognition rate is impacted by external factors such as vehicle cabin noise, road noise, and internal factors which are a function of the voice engine in the system itself. This paper analyzes the VR performance under the effect of two external factors, vehicle cabin noise and the speakers’ speech patterns based on gender. It also compares performance of mid-level sedans from different manufacturers.

Currently, diesel engine-out exhaust NOx emission level prediction is a major challenge for complying with the stricter emission legislation and for control purpose of the after-treatment system. Most of the NOx prediction research is based on the Zeldovich thermal mechanism, which is reasonable from the physical point of view and for its simplicity. Nevertheless, there are some predictable range limitations, such as low temperature with high EGR rate operating conditions or high temperature with low EGR rates. In the present paper, 3 additional considerations, pilot burned gas mixing before the main injection; major NO formation area; concentration correction, were applied to the previously developed real-time NO estimation model based on in-cylinder pressure and data available from ECU. The model improvement was verified on a 1.6 liter EURO5 diesel engine in both steady and transient operation.

Polylactide (PLA), which is one of the most important biocompatible polyesters that are derived from annually renewable biomass such as corn and sugar beets, has attracted much attention for automotive parts application. The manufacturing method of PLA is the ring-opening polymerization of the dimeric cyclic ester of lactic acid, lactide. For the PLA composites including stereocomplexed with L- and D-PLA, we developed the unit processes such as fermentation, separation, lactide conversion, and polymerization. We investigated D-lactic acid fermentation with a view to obtaining the strains capable of producing D-lactic acid, and through catalyst screening test for polycondensation and depolymerization reactions, we got a new method which shortens the whole reaction time of lactide synthesis step. Poly(d-lactide) is obtained from the ring-opening polymerization of d-lactide. Also we investigated several catalysts and polymerization conditions.

This paper focuses on the vehicle test result of the US fuel economy test cycles such as FTP75, HWY and US06 with model based Cooled EGR system. Cooled EGR SW function was realized by Model Based Development (internal rapid prototyping) using iRPT tool. With EGR, mixing exhaust gas with clean air reduces the oxygen concentration in the cylinder charge, as a result, the combustion process is slowed, and the combustion temperature drops. This experiment confirmed that the spark timing was more advanced without knocking and manifold pressure was increased in all cases with EGR. A positive potential of fuel economy improvement on FTP mode, US06 mode have seen in this experiment but not for HWY where the engine load is quite low and the spark advance is already optimized. As a result, fuel economy was increased by maximum 3.3% on FTP, 2.7% on US06, decreased by 0.3% on HWY mode respectively with EGR.

Numerical durability analysis is the only approach that can be used to assess the durability of vehicles in early stages of development. In these stages, where there are no physical prototypes available, the road wheel forces (or spindle forces) for durability testing on Belgian PG (Proving Ground) must be predicted by VPG (Virtual Proving Ground) or derived from the measured forces of predecessor vehicles. In addition, the tuning parts and geometry are not fixed at these stages. This results in the variation of spindle forces during the development stages. Therefore, it is not reasonable to choose the forces predicted at a specific tuning condition as standard forces. It is more reasonable to determine the standard forces stochastically using the DB of the measured forces of predecessor vehicles. The spindle forces measured or predicted on Belgian PG are typically stationary random.