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With the development of vehicles equipped with automated driving systems, the need for systematic evaluation of AV performance has grown increasingly imperative. According to ISO 34502, one of the safety test objectives is to learn the minimum performance levels required for diverse scenarios. To address this need, this paper combines two essential methodologies - scenario-based testing procedures and scoring systems - to systematically evaluate the behavioral competence of AVs. In this study, we conduct comprehensive testing across diverse scenarios within a simulator environment following Mcity AV Driver Licensing Test procedure. These scenarios span several common real-world driving situations, including BV Cut-in, BV Lane Departure into VUT Path from Opposite Direction, BV Left Turn Across VUT Path, and BV Right Turn into VUT Path scenarios.

Prior work in the literature have shown that pre-chamber spark plug technologies can provide remarkable improvements in engine performance. In this work, three passively fueled pre-chamber spark plugs with different pre-chamber geometries were investigated using in-cylinder high-speed imaging of spectral emission in the visible wavelength region in a single-cylinder direct-injection spark-ignition gasoline engine. The effects of the pre-chamber spark plugs on flame development were analyzed by comparing the flame progress between the pre-chamber spark plugs and with the results from a conventional spark plug. The engine was operated at fixed conditions (relevant to federal test procedures) with a constant speed of 1500 revolutions per minute with a coolant temperature of 90 oC and stoichiometric fuel-to-air ratio. The in-cylinder images were captured with a color high-speed camera through an optical insert in the piston crown.

Autonomy for multiple trucks to drive in a fixed-headway platoon formation is achieved by adding precision GPS and V2V communications to a conventional adaptive cruise control (ACC) system. The performance of the Cooperative ACC (CACC) system depends heavily on the reliability of the underlying V2V communications network. Using data recorded on precision-instrumented trucks at both ACM and NCAT test tracks, we provide an understanding of various effects on V2V network performance: Occlusions - non-line-of-sight (NLOS) between the Tx and Rx antenna may cause network signal loss. Rain - water droplets in the air may cause network signal degradation. Antenna position - antennas at higher elevation may have less ground clutter to deal with. RF interference - interference may cause network packet loss. GPS outage - outages caused by tree cover, tunnels, etc. may result in degraded performance. Road curvature - curves may affect antenna diversity.

A wet clutch continues to play a critical role for step-ratio automatic transmissions and finds new utilities in hybrid and electrified propulsion systems. A torque transfer function is often employed in practice for sophisticated clutch slip controls. It provides a simple, yet practical framework to represent clutch torque as a function of actuator force. An accurate transfer function is also increasingly desired in today's vehicle design process to enable upfront assessment of clutch controls through simulations. The most common approach is based on Coulomb's linear friction model, where the coefficients are adaptively identified based on vehicle data. However, it is generally difficult to tune Coulomb's model for hydrodynamic behaviors even if the reference vehicle data are available. It also remains a challenge to produce in-vehicle clutch behaviors on a component test bench to determine realistic transfer function before prototype vehicles are built.

The investigation and measurement of particle emissions from foundation brakes require the use of a special adaptation of inertia dynamometer test systems. To have proper measurements for particle mass and particle number, the sampling system needs to minimize transport losses and reduce residence times inside the brake enclosure. Existing models and spreadsheets estimate key transport losses (diffusion, turbophoretic, contractions, gravitational, bends, and sampling isokinetics). A significant limitation of such models is that they cannot assess the turbulent flow and associated particle dynamics inside the brake enclosure; which are anticipated to be important. This paper presents a Design of Experiments (DOE) approach using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to predict the flow within a dynamometer enclosure under relevant operating conditions. The systematic approach allows the quantification of turbulence intensity, mean velocity profiles, and residence times.

Motion sickness in road vehicles may become an increasingly important problem as automation transforms drivers into passengers. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has developed a vehicle-based platform to study motion sickness in passenger vehicles. A test-track study was conducted with 52 participants who reported susceptibility to motion sickness. The participants completed in-vehicle testing on a 20-minute scripted, continuous drive that consisted of a series of frequent 90-degree turns, braking, and lane changes at the U-M Mcity facility. In addition to quantifying their level of motion sickness on a numerical scale, participants were asked to describe in words any motion-sickness-related sensations they experienced.

A wet clutch couples or decouples gear elements to alter torque paths in an automatic transmission system. During the gear shifting event, the clutch torque is directly transmitted to the output shaft. Hence, clutch torque heavily influences the dynamics of the transmission. In order to evaluate the behavior of the transmission early and efficiently, the development process increasingly relies on high-fidelity transmission system simulations with added complexity. However, a wet clutch continues to be modeled using Coulomb’s friction in a typical shift simulation. Its linear framework does not physically represent non-linear hydrodynamic effects due to the presence of oil layer during clutch engagement. To make up the lack of physics, Coulomb’s clutch model often requires extensive tuning to match actual shift behaviors.

A new generation of a planetary-gear-based automatic transmission system is designed with an increasing number of ratio steps. It requires synchronous operation of one or more wet clutches, to achieve a complex shift event. A missed synchronization results in drive torque disturbance which may be perceived by vehicle occupants as an undesirable shift shock. Accurate knowledge of clutch behaviors in an actual vehicle environment is indispensable for achieving precise clutch controls and reducing shift calibration effort. Wet clutches are routinely evaluated on an industry-standard SAE#2 tester during the clutch design process. While it is a valuable tool for screening relative frictional behaviors, clutch engagement data from a SAE#2 tester do not correlate well with vehicle shift behaviors due to the limited reproducibility of realistic slip, actuator force profiles, and lubrication conditions.

Flow control devices can enable vehicle drag reduction through the mitigation of separation and by modifying local and global flow features. Passive vortex generators (VG) are an example of a flow control device that can be designed to re-energize weakly-attached boundary layers to prevent or minimize separation regions that can increase drag. Accurate numerical simulation of such devices and their impact on the vehicle aerodynamics is an important step towards enabling automated drag reduction and shape optimization for a wide range of vehicle concepts. This work demonstrates the use of an open-source computational-fluid dynamics (CFD) framework to enable an accurate and robust evaluation of passive vortex generators in support of vehicle drag reduction. Specifically, the backlight separation of the Ahmed body with a 25° slant is used to evaluate different turbulence models including variants of the RANS, DES, and LES formulations.

As part of its midterm evaluation of the 2022-2025 light-duty greenhouse gas (GHG) standards, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been acquiring fuel efficiency data from testing of recent engines and vehicles. The benchmarking data are used as inputs to EPA’s Advanced Light Duty Powertrain and Hybrid Analysis (ALPHA) vehicle simulation model created to estimate GHG emissions from light-duty vehicles. For complete powertrain modeling, ALPHA needs both detailed engine fuel consumption maps and transmission efficiency maps. EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuels Emissions Laboratory has previously relied on contractors to provide full characterization of transmission efficiency maps. To add to its benchmarking resources, EPA developed a streamlined more cost-effective in-house method of transmission testing, capable of gathering a dataset sufficient to broadly characterize transmissions within ALPHA.

Wet clutch packs are widely used in today’s automatic transmission systems for gear-ratio shifting. The frictional interfaces between the clutch plates are continuously lubricated with transmission fluid for both thermal and friction management. The open clutch packs shear transmission fluid across the rotating plates, contributing to measurable energy losses. A typical multi-speed transmission includes as many as 5 clutch packs. Of those, two to three clutches are open at any time during a typical drive cycle, presenting an opportunity for fuel economy gain. However, reducing open clutch drag is very challenging, while meeting cooling requirements and shift quality targets. In practice, clutch design adjustment is performed through trial-and-error evaluation of hardware on a test bench. The use of analytical methodologies is limited for optimizing clutch design features due to the complexity of fluid-structure interactions under rotating conditions.

To advance vehicle lightweighting, chopped carbon fiber sheet molding compound (SMC) is identified as a promising material to replace metals. However, there are no effective tools and methods to predict the mechanical property of the chopped carbon fiber SMC due to the high complexity in microstructure features and the anisotropic properties. In this paper, a Representative Volume Element (RVE) approach is used to model the SMC microstructure. Two modeling methods, the Voronoi diagram-based method and the chip packing method, are developed to populate the RVE. The elastic moduli of the RVE are calculated and the two methods are compared with experimental tensile test conduct using Digital Image Correlation (DIC). Furthermore, the advantages and shortcomings of these two methods are discussed in terms of the required input information and the convenience of use in the integrated processing-microstructure-property analysis.

Intermediate shaft assembly is used to connect steering gear to the steering wheel. The primary function of the intermediate shaft is to transfer torsional loads. There is a high probability of noise propagating through the Intermediate shaft to the driver. The current standard for measuring the noise is by performing vehicle level subjective evaluations. If improperly clamped at either of the yokes, a sudden change in the direction of the torsional load on the Intermediate shaft can generate a displeasing noise. Noise can also be generated from the constant velocity joint. Intermediate shaft noise can be measured using a microphone or can be correlated to acceleration values. The benefit of measuring the acceleration over sound pressure level is the reduction of complexity of the test environment and test set up. The nature of the noise in question requires the filtering of low frequency data. This paper presents a new test procedure that has been developed by General Motors.

This study was conducted to develop and validate a multidimensional measure of shift quality as perceived by drivers during kick-down shift events for automatic transmission vehicles. As part of the first study, a survey was conducted among common drivers to identify primary factors used to describe subjective gear-shifting qualities. A factor analysis on the survey data revealed four semantic subdimensions. These subdimensions include responsiveness, smoothness, unperceivable, and strength. Based on the four descriptive terms, a measure with semantic scales on each subdimension was developed and used in an experiment as the second study. Twelve participants drove and evaluated five vehicles with different gear shifting patterns. Participants were asked to make kick-down events with two different driving intentions (mild vs. sporty) across three different speeds on actual roadway (local streets and highway).

A numerical study is conducted to investigate the effect of changing engine oil and automatic transmission fluid (ATF) temperatures on the fuel economy during warm-up period. The study also evaluates several fuel economy improving devices that reduce the warm-up period by utilizing recycled exhaust heat or an electric heater. A computer simulation model has been developed using a multi-domain 1-D commercial software and calibrated using test data from a passenger vehicle equipped with a 2.4 / 4-cylinder engine and a 6-speed automatic transmission. The model consists of sub-models for driver, vehicle, engine, automatic transmission, cooling system, engine oil circuit, ATF circuit, and electrical system. The model has demonstrated sufficient sensitivity to the changing engine oil and ATF temperatures during the cold start portion of the Federal Test Procedure (FTP) driving cycle that is used for the fuel economy evaluation.

This paper proposes a framework to perform design optimization of a series PHEV and investigates the impact of using real-world driving inputs on final design. Real-World driving is characterized from a database of naturalistic driving generated in Field Operational Tests. The procedure utilizes Markov chains to generate synthetic drive cycles representative of real-world driving. Subsequently, PHEV optimization is performed in two steps. First the optimal battery and motor sizes to most efficiently achieve a desired All Electric Range (AER) are determined. A synthetic cycle representative of driving over a given range is used for function evaluations. Then, the optimal engine size is obtained by considering fuel economy in the charge sustaining (CS) mode. The higher power/energy demands of real-world cycles lead to PHEV designs with substantially larger batteries and engines than those developed using repetitions of the federal urban cycle (UDDS).

This paper proposes a simulation based methodology to assess plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) behavior over 24-hour periods. Several representative 24-hour missions comprise naturalistic cycle data and information about vehicle resting time. The data were acquired during Filed Operational Tests (FOT) of a fleet of passenger vehicles carried out by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) for safety research. Then, PHEV behavior is investigated using a simulation with two different charging scenarios: (1) Charging overnight; (2) Charging whenever possible. Charging/discharging patterns of the battery as well as trends of charge depleting (CD) and charge sustaining (CS) modes at each scenario were assessed. Series PHEV simulation is generated using Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit (PSAT) developed by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and in-house Matlab codes.

In this study, a new actuation system concept is developed for automotive transmission shift control. A piezoelectric-hydraulic pump (in short, PHP) based actuation system is one of the potential alternatives that can replace the current electro-hydraulic actuation system in automotive transmissions. Their feasibility has been successfully demonstrated in a lab environment. This study extends the application of the PHP actuator into an AT (Automatic Transmission) test-bed to validate the effectiveness of the new power-by-wire actuation concept. To demonstrate the potentials of the PHP actuator, a nonlinear sliding mode control for force tracking and hardware-in-the-loop simulation (in short, HILS) are performed.

The current test methods are insufficient to evaluate and ensure the safety and reliability of vehicle system for all possible dynamic situations including the worst cases such as rollover, spin-out and so on. Although the known NHTSA J-turn and Fish-hook steering maneuvers are applied for the vehicle performance assessment, they are not enough to predict other possible worst case scenarios. Therefore, it is crucial to search for the various worst cases including the existing severe steering maneuvers. This paper includes the procedure to search for other useful worst case based upon the existing worst case scenarios in terms of rollover and its application in simulation basis. The human steering angle is selected as a design variable and optimized to maximize the index function to be expressed in terms of vehicle roll angle. The obtained scenarios were enough to generate the worse cases than NHTSA ones.

Quantification of residual stresses is an important engineering problem impacting manufacturabilty and durability of metallic components. An area of particular concern is residual stresses that can develop during heat treatment of metallic components. Many heat treatments, especially in heat treatable cast aluminum alloys, involve a water-quenching step immediately after a solution-treatment cycle. This rapid water quench has the potential to induce high residual stresses in regions of the castings that experience large thermal gradients. These stresses may be partially relaxed during the aging portion of the heat treatment. The goal of this research was to develop a test sample and quench technique to quantify the stresses created by steep thermal gradients during rapid quenching of cast aluminum. The development and relaxation of residual stresses during the aging cycle was studied experimentally with the use of strain gauges.