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NOx emissions limits for commercial trucks will be drastically reduced in the United States and Europe later in this decade. The most recent Euro VII proposal suggested that pre-heating of the aftertreatment system with a diesel burner may be needed to meet a new low-NOx limit. Pre-heating serves to prepare the SCR catalyst so that it can begin to convert NOx almost immediately after the engine is started. This is particularly important for an engine that is not equipped with exhaust gas recirculation to reduce engine-out NOx. This study considered a burner installed between a 12.4 liter engine and an appropriately-sized in-line DOC/DPF/SCR aftertreatment system. Initially, a wide range of burner and air pump operating conditions were examined to determine the maximum fueling rate and corresponding air flow rate necessary to complete combustion and to convey the resultant heat downstream to the aftertreatment components.

The commercial vehicle industry continues to move in the direction of improving brake thermal efficiency while meeting more stringent diesel engine emission requirements. This study focused on demonstrating future emissions by using an exhaust burner upstream of a conventional aftertreatment system. This work highlights system results over the low load cycle (LLC) and many other pertinent cycles (Beverage Cycle, and Stay Hot Cycle, New York Bus Cycle). These efforts complement previous works showing system performance over the Heavy-Duty FTP and World Harmonized Transient Cycle (WHTC). The exhaust burner is used to raise and maintain the Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) catalyst at its optimal temperature over these cycles for efficient NOX reduction. This work showed that tailpipe NOX is significantly improved over these cycles with the exhaust burner.

As greenhouse gas regulations continue to tighten, more opportunities to improve engine efficiency emerge, including exhaust gas heat recovery. Upon cold starts, engine exhaust gases downstream of the catalysts are redirected with a bypass valve into a heat exchanger, transferring its heat to the coolant to accelerate engine warm-up. This has several advantages, including reduced fuel consumption, as the engine’s efficiency improves with temperature. Furthermore, this accelerates readiness to defrost the windshield, improving both safety as well as comfort, with greater benefits in colder climates, particularly when combined with hybridization’s need for engine on-time solely for cabin heating. Such products have been in the market now for several years; however they are bulky, heavy and expensive, yielding opportunities for competitive alternatives.

A novel Spatially Optimized Diffusion Alloy (SODA) material has been developed and applied to exhaust systems, which are an aggressive environment subject to high temperatures and loads, as well as excessive corrosion. Traditional stainless steels disperse chromium homogeneously throughout the material, with varying amounts ranging from 10% to 20% dependent upon its grade (e.g. 409, 436, 439, 441, and 304). SODA steels, however, offer layered concentrations of chromium, enabling an increased amount along the outer surface for much needed corrosion resistance and aesthetics. This outer layer, typically about 70μm thick, exceeds 20% of chromium concentration locally, but is less than 3% in bulk, offering selective placement of the chromium to minimize its overall usage. Since this layer is metallurgically bonded, it cannot delaminate or separate from its core, enabling durable protection throughout manufacturing processes and full useful life.

The low-NOx standard for heavy duty trucks proposed by the California Air Resources Board represents a significant challenge to the engine and aftertreatment system. In this study, exhaust thermal management requirements were quantified using a combination of engine and aftertreatment modeling. First, a 1-D engine model was used to develop a control strategy capable of increasing the exhaust enthalpy and decreasing the engine-out NOx over the initial portion of the cold FTP cycle. The outputs from this model were then used as inputs to a 1-D model of a representative HD aftertreatment system. Several different passive exhaust thermal management technologies were evaluated with this aftertreatment system model, including insulating the downpipe, close-coupling the aftertreatment system, and reducing the thermal inertia of the DOC and DPF; the last option provides the most benefit to early NOx conversion.

In the hybrid brake system of electric vehicle, due to the limitation of the motor braking force when the motor is at high speed and the failure of the regenerative braking force when the motor is at low speed, there are three transitional conditions in hybrid braking: the hydraulic brake system intervenes the braking, the hydraulic brake system withdraws the braking and the regenerative braking force withdraws the braking. Due to the response speed of the hydraulic system is slower than that of the motor, there is a large braking impact (the derivative of braking deceleration) in the transitional conditions of hybrid braking, which deteriorates the smoothness and comfort in braking. Aiming at the impact caused by the poor cooperation between the hydraulic braking force and the motor braking force, a coordinated strategy of double closed-loop feedback and motor force correction is proposed in this paper.

In the process of ABS control, the Anti-lock braking system (ABS) of the vehicle adjusts the wheel cylinder brake pressure through the hydraulic actuator so as to control the movement of the wheel. The high-speed on-off valve (HSV) is the key components of the Anti-lock braking system. HSV affects the performance of the hydraulic actuator and the valve response characteristics affects the Anti-lock braking system pressure response as well as braking effect. In this paper, the electromagnetic field theory and flow field theory of HSV are analyzed, and simulation analysis of electromagnetic field characteristics of HSV is done by ANSYS. Combined with the ANSYS analysis results, a precise physical model of HSV is constructed in AMESim. Meanwhile, the valve response characteristics are analyzed. Moreover, the influence of different wheel cylinder diameter and PWM carrier frequency on hydraulic braking force characteristics are analyzed.

In order to establish the correlation between objective and subjective evaluation of brake pedal feel for passenger cars, road tests of brake pedal feel were carried out and an evaluation method was proposed. In the road tests, subjective scores and objective measurements were obtained under the conditions of uniform and emergency braking. The objective measurements include pedal preload, low deceleration pedal force and travel, moderate deceleration pedal force and travel, brake response time and brake linearity. Using the theory of analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the design process of the evaluation method was established. Key setups including the hierarchical structure model, the judgement matrix and the score calculation method of objective measurements were described in detail. Then, the correlation between subjective and objective scores was analyzed. It can be concluded that the evaluation method is effective and it can be applied to brake pedal feel assessment and adjustment.

In order to explore the generation mechanism of hot-spots on the automotive brake disc, disc tests under non-frictional thermal loads are carried out on the brake dynamometer test bench. In the tests, the oxy-acetylene flame is used as the heat source, and the distribution characteristics of the disc temperature and displacement are measured and analyzed. To confirm the mechanism of the disc deformation, a disc thermal buckling model using finite element method is established, and the key factors for the disc thermal buckling under thermal loads are further analyzed. It is found that the temperature circumferential gradient is small but the temperature radial gradient is large. The disc presents waviness deformation mode with 5th order in circumferential direction, which is the first thermal buckling mode of the disc. A method using spatial frequency spectrum has been proposed to find the critical time and load of thermal buckling.

Automatic lane change of intelligent vehicles is a complex process. Besides of safety, feelings of the driver and passengers during the lane change are also very important. In this paper, a lane change trajectory planner is designed to generate an ideal collision-free trajectory to satisfy the driver’s preference. Various lane changing modes, gentle lane change, general lane change, radical lane change and personalized lane change, are designed to meet the needs of different passengers on vehicles simultaneously. In this paper, the condition of the two-lane change is studied. One vehicle is in front of the ego vehicle at the same lane and one is at the rear of the ego vehicle at the target lane. A trajectory planning method is then established based on constant speed offset and sine curve, vehicle distances and speed difference, etc. The key factors which can reflect drivers’ lane change characteristics are then acquired.

It is important to quantitatively characterize the automotive events in order to not only accurately interpret their past but also to reliably predict and forecast their short-term, medium-term, and even long-term future. In this paper, several automotive industry related events, i.e. vehicle safety, vehicle weight/HP ratio, the emissions of CO2, HC, CO, and NOx, are analyzed to find their general trends. Exponential and power law functions are used to empirically fit and quantitatively characterize these data with an emphasis on the two functions’ effectiveness in predictability. Finally, three empirical emission laws based on the historical HC, CO, and NOx data are proposed and the impact of these laws on emission control is discussed.

Almost one-third of the fuel energy is wasted through the exhaust of a vehicle. An efficient waste heat recovery (WHR) process will undoubtedly lead to improved fuel efficiency and reduced greenhouse gases (GHG) emission. Currently, there are multiple WHR technologies that are being investigated by various entities in the auto industry. One relatively simple device to extract heat energy from the exhaust is a heat exchanger. Heat exchangers are used in some automotive applications to transfer heat from the hot exhaust gas to the colder coolant fluid to raise the coolant temperature. The warmer coolant fluid can be used for several purposes such as; faster heating of the engine’s lubrication oil and transmission fluids during cold starts, and faster cabin heating, which in turn, can potentially improve the overall engine efficiency and reduce exhaust emissions.

The Cu-zeolite (CuZ) SCR catalyst enables higher NOx conversion efficiency in part because it can store a significant amount of NH3. “NH3 storage control”, where diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) is dosed in accord with a target NH3 loading, is widely used with CuZ catalysts to achieve very high efficiency. The NH3 loading actually achieved on the catalyst is currently estimated through a stoichiometric calculation. With future high-capacity CuZ catalyst designs, it is likely that the accuracy of this NH3 loading estimate will become limiting for NOx conversion efficiency. Therefore, a direct measurement of NH3 loading is needed; RF sensing enables this. Relative to RF sensing of soot in a DPF (which is in commercial production), RF sensing of NH3 adsorbed on CuZ is more challenging. Therefore, more attention must be paid to the “microwave resonance cavity” created within the SCR assembly. The objective of this study was to develop design guidelines to enable and enhance RF sensing.

The purpose of this work was to initiate a comparative evaluation of the aqueous corrosion resistance of ferritic stainless steels currently used to fabricate automotive exhaust systems. Both acid condensate and double loop electrochemical potentiokinetic reactivation (DL-EPR) testing using both as-received and heat treated test coupons prepared from Types 409, 409Al, 436 and 439 stainless steel was conducted for this purpose. A truncated version of an in-house acid condensate testing protocol revealed that Type 409Al stainless steel was the most resistant to corrosion of the four ferritic stainless steels examined, whereas Type 409 stainless steel was the least resistance to corrosion.

After obtaining the optimal trajectory through the lane change decision and trajectory planning, the last key technology for the automatic lane change assist system is to carry out the precise and rapid steering actuation according to the front wheel angle demand. Therefore, an automatic lane change system model including a BLDCM (brushless DC motor) model, a steering system model and a vehicle dynamics model is first established in this paper. Electromagnetic characteristics of the motor, the moment of the inertia and viscous friction etc. are considered in these models. Then, a SMC (Sliding Mode Control) algorithm for the steering system is designed to follow the steering angle input. The control torque of the steering motor is obtained through the system model according to steering angle demand. After that, the control current is calculated considering of electromagnetic characteristics of the BLDCM. Debugging and optimization of the control algorithm are done through simulations.

The automatic lane change assist system is an intelligent driving assistance technology oriented to traffic safety, which requires trajectory planning of the lane change maneuver based on the lane change decision. A typical scene of lane change for overtaking is selected, where the front vehicle in the same lane and the rear vehicle in the left lane are deemed to be potential dangerous vehicles through the lane change. Lane change trajectory equation is first established according to the general law of steering wheel angle through lane changes. Based on the relative position, velocity and acceleration information of the dangerous vehicles and the lane change vehicle, motions of these surrounding dangerous vehicles are predicted. At the same time, a multi-objective optimization function is established based on the relative longitudinal safety boundary. The objectives are the minimum safety distance, the lane change time and the front wheel angle.

External Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) has been used on diesel engines for decades and has also been used on gasoline engines in the past. It is recently reintroduced on gasoline engines to improve fuel economy at mid and high engine load conditions, where EGR can reduce throttling losses and fuel enrichment. Fuel enrichment causes fuel penalty and high soot particulates, as well as hydrocarbon (HC) emissions, all of which are limited by emissions regulations. Under stoichiometric conditions, gasoline engines can be operated at high EGR rates (> 20%), but more than diesel engines, its intake gas including external EGR needs extreme cooling (down to ~50°C) to gain the maximum fuel economy improvement. However, external EGR and its problems at low temperatures (fouling, corrosion & condensation) are well known.

Recent stringent government regulations on emission control and fuel economy drive the vehicles and their associated components and systems to the direction of lighter weight. However, the achieved lightweight must not be obtained by sacrificing other important performance requirements such as manufacturability, strength, durability, reliability, safety, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH). Additionally, cost is always a dominating factor in the lightweight design of automotive products. Therefore, a successful lightweight design can only be accomplished by better understanding the performance requirements, the potentials and limitations of the designed products, and by balancing many conflicting design parameters. The combined knowledge-based design optimization procedures and, inevitably, some trial-and-error design iterations are the practical approaches that should be adopted in the lightweight design for the automotive applications.

Vehicle exhaust components and systems under fatigue loading often show multiple failure modes, which should be treated, at least theoretically, with rigorous advanced bi-modal and multi-modal statistical theories and approaches. These advanced methods are usually applied to mission-critical engineering applications such as nuclear and aerospace, in which large amounts of test data are often available. In the automotive industry, however, the sample size adopted in the product validation is usually small, thus the bi-modal and multi-modal phenomena cannot be distinguished with certainty.

Downsizing gasoline direct injection engine with turbo boost technology is the main trend for gasoline engine. However, with engine downsizing and ever increasing of power output, a new abnormal phenomenon, known as pre-ignition or super knock, occurs in turbocharged engines. Pre-ignition will cause very high in-cylinder pressure and high oscillations. In some circumstances, one cycle of severe pre-ignition may damage the piston or spark plug, which has a severe influence on engine performance and service life. So pre-ignition has raised lots of attention in both industry and academic society. More and more studies reveal that the auto-ignition of lubricants is the potential source for pre-ignition. The auto-ignition characteristics of different lubricants are studied. This paper focuses on the ignition delay of different lubricants in Controllable Active Thermo-Atmosphere (CATA) combustion system.