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The efforts of the ISO “Test Variability Task Force” have been aimed at improving the understanding and at reducing brake dynamometer test variability during performance testing. In addition, dynamometer test results have been compared and correlated to vehicle testing. Even though there is already a vast amount of anecdotal evidence confirming the fact that different procedures generate different friction coefficients on the same brake corner, the availability of supporting data to the industry has been elusive up to this point. To overcome this issue, this paper focuses on assessing friction levels, friction coefficient sensitivity, and repeatability under ECE, GB, ISO, JASO, and SAE laboratory friction evaluation tests.

The objectives of this study were a) to determine how expert judges categorized valid Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety Systems (IVBSS) Forward Collision Warning (FCW) events from review of naturalistic driving data; and b) to determine how consistent these categorizations were across the judges working in pairs. FCW event data were gathered from 108 drivers who drove instrumented vehicles for 6 weeks each. The data included video of the driver and road scene ahead, beside, and behind the vehicle; audio of the FCW alert onset; and engineering data such as speed and braking applications. Six automotive safety experts examined 197 ‘valid’ (i.e., conditions met design intent) FCW events and categorized each according to a taxonomy of primary contributing factors. Results indicated that of these valid FCW events, between 55% and 73% could be considered ‘nuisance alerts’ by the driver.

This paper documents the finite element (FE) analysis of a hot stamping process for high strength aluminum sheet. In this process a 7075 blank, heated above its solvus temperature, was simultaneously die quenched and stamped in a room temperature die to form a B-pillar outer reinforcement. Two modeling approaches have been investigated: an isothermal mechanical model and a non-isothermal coupled thermo-mechanical model. The accuracy of each approach was assessed by comparing the predicted strain and thickness distributions to experimental measurements from a formed panel. The coupled thermo-mechanical model provided the most accurate prediction.

Small crack growth from notches under variable amplitude loading requires that crack opening stress be followed on a cycle by cycle basis and taken into account in making fatigue life predictions. The use of constant amplitude fatigue life data that ignores changes in crack opening stress due to high stress overloads in variable amplitude fatigue leads to non-conservative fatigue life predictions. Similarly fatigue life predictions based on small crack growth calculations for cracks growing from flaws in notches are non-conservative when constant amplitude crack growth data are used. These non-conservative predictions have, in both cases, been shown to be due to severe reductions in fatigue crack closure arising from large (overload or underload) cycles in a typical service load history.

High-resolution planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) measurements were performed on the scalar field in an optical engine. The measurements were of sufficient resolution to fully resolve all of the length scales of the flow field through the full cycle. The scalar dissipation spectrum was calculated, and by fitting the results to a model turbulent spectrum the Batchelor scale of the turbulent flow was estimated. The scalar inhomogeneity was introduced by a low-momentum gas jet injection. A consistent trend was observed in all data; the Batchelor scale showed a minimum value at top dead center (TDC) and was nearly symmetric about TDC. Increasing the engine speed resulted in a decrease of the Batchelor scale, and the presence of a shroud on the intake valve, which increased the turbulence intensity, also reduced the Batchelor scale. The effect of the shrouded valve was less significant compared to the effect of engine speed.

Combustion engines are typically only 20-30% efficient at part-load operating conditions, resulting in poor fuel economy on average. To address this, LiquidPiston has developed an improved thermodynamics cycle, called the High-Efficiency Hybrid Cycle (HEHC), which optimizes each process (stroke) of the engine operation, with the aim of maximizing fuel efficiency. The cycle consists of: 1) a high compression ratio; 2) constant-volume combustion, and 3) over-expansion. At a modest compression ratio of 18:1, this cycle offers an ideal thermodynamic efficiency of 74%. To embody the HEHC cycle, LiquidPiston has developed two very different rotary engine architectures ? called the ?M? and ?X? engines. These rotary engine architectures offer flexibility in executing the thermodynamics cycle, and also result in a very compact package. In this talk, I will present recent results in the development of the LiquidPiston engines. The company is currently testing 20 and 40 HP versions of the ?M?

The Focus Electric is Ford�s first full-featured 5 passenger battery electric vehicle. The engineering team set our sights on achieving best-in-class function and efficiency and was successful with an EPA certified 1XX MPGe and range XXX then the facing competition allowing for a slightly lower capacity battery pack and larger vehicle without customer trade-off. We briefly overview the engineering method and technologies employed to deliver the results as well as sharing some of the functional challenges unique to this type of vehicle. Presenter Charles Gray, Ford Motor Co.

The presentation offers a brief history of the electric vehicle and parallels the realities of those early vehicles with the challenges and solutions of the electrified vehicles coming to market today. A technology evolution for every major component of these vehicles has now made this mode of transportation viable. The Focus Electric is Ford's first electric passenger car utilizing the advanced technology developments to meet the needs of electric car buyers in this emerging market. Presenter Charles Gray, Ford Motor Co.

The present work discusses an objective test and analysis method developed to quickly quantify steering gear rattle noise heard in a vehicle. Utilizing envelope analysis on the time history data of the rattle signal, the resulting method is simple, fast, practical and yields a single-valued metric which correlates well to subjective measures of rattle noise. In contrast to many other rattle analysis methods, the approach discussed here is completed in the time domain. As applied to rattle noise produced by automotive electric steering systems, the metric produced with this analysis method correlates well with subjective appraisals of vehicle-level rattle noise performance. Lastly, this method can also be extended to rattle measurements at the component and subcomponent level.

Most people still remember the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981 and the first Microsoft Windows operating system in 1985. These were the pioneering technologies that started a revolution in automotive test equipment in the service bay. What was once a purely mechanical garage environment where information was published annually in large paper manuals has evolved into a highly technical computing environment. Today vehicle networks link onboard vehicle control systems with diagnostic systems and updated service information is published daily over the Internet. A lot has changed over the last twenty years, and manufacturers of diagnostic test equipment are learning to deal with the constantly evolving computing platforms and host operating systems. This paper traces the history of automotive diagnostic equipment at Ford Motor Company and shares some of the hard lessons learned from the early systems.

This paper is the second in the series of documents designed to record the progress of a series of SAE documents - SAE J2836™, J2847, J2931, & J2953 - within the Plug-In Electric Vehicle (PEV) Communication Task Force. This follows the initial paper number 2010-01-0837, and continues with the test and modeling of the various PLC types for utility programs described in J2836/1™ & J2847/1. This also extends the communication to an off-board charger, described in J2836/2™ & J2847/2 and includes reverse energy flow described in J2836/3™ and J2847/3. The initial versions of J2836/1™ and J2847/1 were published early 2010. J2847/1 has now been re-opened to include updates from comments from the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), Smart Grid Architectural Committee (SGAC) and Cyber Security Working Group committee (SCWG).

Current road vehicles have tendency of use softer suspension springs to improve ride comfort, but as a moving device with suspension system, vehicles have other parts that can affect attributes for comfort perception, and is necessary the correct definition of which one should be modified to address the comfort issue and avoid impact in attributes for stability. Usually springs are not the main responsible for bad comfort behavior, but shock absorbers and bushings are. A typical passenger car shows a wide possibility of loads carriage and how to set up correctly the suspensions considering its tradeoffs and brand DNA is the main issue.

Internal combustion engines are designed to meet the high power, low fuel consumption and also, low exhaust emissions. The engine running conditions is valid the concept that, the expectative is very high because of the variety of operating conditions like cold start, frequent start and stop, time high speed and load, traditional gasoline, mix of gasoline and alcohol and finally, alcohol fuel only. Considering such demand, this paper explains the relationship between the reliability bathtub curve, specifically the "Infant Mortality" portion. The bathtub curve describes failure rate as a function of time. The "Infant Mortality" portion of the curve is the initial section for which the failure (death) rate decreases with time (age). In general, these problems are related to manufacturing aspects or poor design definitions. With development of technology, hard failures, the ones that cause dependability, are becoming rare.

Emerging markets and South America in particular, have quickly become the cornerstone of major automotive companies in recent years. Currently, all major players are located in the region, and this has created an excellent environment for developing market-tailored products. The trend in the design and technology community is one which allows the final customer to improve his own safety and reduce overall power consumption. Throughout the entire automotive industry, the lighting system has always had a very important role to play during its long history. In the past 50 years, vehicular lighting has achieved an important status due to its close relationship by enhancing passenger and vehicle security. In addition, there is still room for improvement in the halogen front lighting system. Particularly, it is of utmost importance to highlight the implementation of NEO (new efficient optics).

Vehicle target setting is an evolving process based on continually changing internal (management, standards) and external (competitive and legal) requirements. In addition to evolving requirements, the process for establishing and documenting targets may not be clear. The objective of this paper is to detail the overall process of target setting, the critical factors to consider, and key definitions for each stage of the process. It will describe the complete process from early competitive benchmarking to final verification testing. Setting targets for a vehicle requires definition and thorough benchmarking of the competition, an understanding of the key attributes used to describe the vehicles' performance, and a clearly defined set of requirements. These requirements will be regulatory, corporate and competitively based and grouped by clearly defined, customer perceived attributes which can be cascaded to specific vehicle systems.

In this paper a diagnostic design process is proposed for developmental vehicles where mainstream design process is not well-suited. First a review of current practice in on-board vehicle fault diagnostics design is presented with particular focus on the application of this process to the development of the Ford Escape Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) program and a demonstration Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) program. Based on the review and evaluation of these experiences, a new tool for diagnostics design is proposed that promises to make the design more traceable, to reduce the repetition of work, and to improve understandability and reuse.

Over the past several years a task group within the SAE Automotive Corrosion and Protection (ACAP) Committee has conducted extensive on-vehicle field testing and numerous accelerated lab tests with the goal of establishing a standard accelerated test method for cosmetic corrosion evaluations of finished aluminum auto body panels. This project has been a cooperative effort with OEM, supplier, and consultant participation and was also supported in part by DOE through USAMP (AMD 309). The focus of this project has been the identification of a standardized accelerated cosmetic corrosion test that exhibits the same appearance, severity, and type of corrosion products that are exhibited on identical painted aluminum panels exposed to service relevant environments. Multi-year service relevant exposures were conducted by mounting panels on-vehicles in multiple locations in the US and Canada.

This paper is the first in a series of documents designed to record the progress of the SAE J2293 Task Force as it continues to develop and refine the communication requirements between Plug-In Electric Vehicles (PEV) and the Electric Utility Grid. In February, 2008 the SAE Task Force was formed and it started by reviewing the existing SAE J2293 standard, which was originally developed by the Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Controls Task Force in the 1990s. This legacy standard identified the communication requirements between the Electric Vehicle (EV) and the EV Supply Equipment (EVSE), including off-board charging systems necessary to transfer DC energy to the vehicle. It was apparent at the first Task Force meeting that the communications requirements between the PEV and utility grid being proposed by industry stakeholders were vastly different in the type of communications and messaging documented in the original standard.

The ability to make fully resolved turbulent scalar field measurements has been demonstrated in an internal combustion engine using one-dimensional fluorobenzene fluorescence measurements. Data were acquired during the intake stroke in a motored engine that had been modified such that each intake valve was fed independently, and one of the two intake streams was seeded with the fluorescent tracer. The scalar energy spectra displayed a significant inertial subrange that had a −5/3 wavenumber power dependence. The scalar dissipation spectra were found to extend in the high-wavenumber regime, to where the magnitude was more than two decades below the peak value, which indicates that for all practical purposes the measurements faithfully represent all of the scalar dissipation in the flow.

This paper investigates flow and combustion in a full-cycle simulation of a four-stroke, three-valve HCCI engine by visualizing the flow with pathlines. Pathlines trace massless particles in a transient flow field. In addition to visualization, pathlines are used here to trace the history, or evolution, of flow fields and species. In this study evolution is followed from the intake port through combustion. Pathline analysis follows packets of intake charge in time and space from induction through combustion. The local scalar fields traversed by the individual packets in terms of velocity magnitude, turbulence, species concentration and temperatures are extracted from the simulation results. The results show how the intake event establishes local chemical and thermal environments in-cylinder and how the species respond (chemically react) to the local field.