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With growing demands for better fuel economy and reduced carbon emissions there is a need for smaller and more fuel efficient engines. At the same time, to improve passenger comfort there are also demands placed on improved vehicle quietness [1]. A Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) system or a higher compression ratio system can be used to obtain better fuel economy but the enhanced combustion rate causes an increase in engine vibration in the medium to high frequency range [2, 3]. To ensure vehicle quietness, this issue of structure-borne noise that is transmitted from the engine mounts to the body must be addressed. In this paper a simple anti-vibration active mount system is introduced that can significantly reduce structure-borne noise at medium to high frequencies. This is achieved by adding mass to the insulator which leads to resonance at lower frequencies, in order to obtain double anti-vibration performance.

This paper describes the performance evolution and key breakthroughs of the world's first one-motor two-clutch (1M2CL) parallel full hybrid system without a torque converter that was developed and implemented on a hybrid luxury sedan in November 2010. The high potential of this hybrid system was brought out further to improve fuel economy without sacrificing acceleration performance. The resultant second generation of the 1M2CL parallel full hybrid system was applied to a hybrid premium sports sedan in August 2013. In order to improve these performance attributes, the following key technical measures were adopted: 1 Motor torque during the EV mode was increased to expand the EV drive region. 2 Maximum motor torque and battery power at engine startup were boosted to reduce the engine start time. 3 Integrated control of the motor and clutches was improved. 4 Mechanical efficiencies were improved for higher fuel economy.

Detailed chemistry and turbulence-chemistry interaction need to be properly taken into account for a realistic combustion simulation of IC engines where advanced combustion modes, multiple injections and stratified combustion involve a wide range of combustion regimes and require a proper description of several phenomena such as auto-ignition, flame stabilization, diffusive combustion and lean premixed flame propagation. To this end, different approaches are applied and the most used ones rely on the well-stirred reactor or flamelet assumption. However, well-mixed models do not describe correctly flame structure, while unsteady flamelet models cannot easily predict premixed flame propagation and triple flames. A possible alternative for them is represented by transported probability density functions (PDF) methods, which have been applied widely and effectively for modeling turbulent reacting flows under a wide range of combustion regimes.

The European project MAAT (Multi-body Advanced Airship for Transport) is producing the design of a transportation system for transport of people and goods, based on the cruiser feeder concept. This project defined novel airship concepts capable of handling safer than in the past hydrogen as a buoyant gas. In particular, it has explored novel variable shape airship concepts, which presents also intrinsic energetic advantages. It has recently conduced to the definition of an innovative design method based on the constructal principle, which applies to large transport vehicles and allows performing an effective energetic optimization and an effective optimization for the specific mission.

A new multi-zone model for the simulation of HCCI engine is here presented. The model includes laminar and turbulent diffusion and conduction exchange between the zones and the last improvements on the numerical aspects. Furthermore, a new strategy for the zone discretization is presented, which allows a better description of the near-wall zones. The aim of the work is to provide a fast and reliable model for carrying out chemical analysis with detailed kinetic schemes. A preliminary sensitivity analysis allows to verify that 10 zones are a convenient number for a good compromise between the computational effort and the description accuracy. The multi-zone predictions are then compared with the CFD ones to find the effective turbulence parameters, with the aim to describe the near-wall phenomena, both in a reactive and non-reactive cases.

Abatement and control of emissions from passenger car combustion engines have been in the focus for a long time. Nevertheless, to address upcoming real-world driving emission targets, knowledge of current engine emissions is crucial. Still, adequate sensors for transient emissions are seldom available in production engines. One way to target this issue is by applying virtual sensors which utilize available sensor information in an engine control unit (ECU) and provide estimates of the not measured emissions. For real-world application it is important that the virtual sensor has low complexity and works under varying conditions. Naturally, the choice of suitable inputs from all available candidates will have a strong impact on these factors. In this work a method to set up virtual sensors by means of design of experiments (DOE) and iterative identification of polynomial models is augmented with a novel input candidate selection strategy.

In this paper a model of the diesel combustion is introduced, which can simulate post-injections for the regeneration of diesel particulate filters. The combustion process is modeled with two phases. The intended use is a HiL-simulator for engine control units. The model must therefore be executed in realtime. For comparison a model based on the work of Constien (Constien, 1991) is also described. This model is currrently used for HiL-applications. Evaluation plots of the accuracy of the models are included as well as plots of the execution time on HiL-hardware.

This paper presents the new Hydrogen Fire-safe Airship system that overcomes the limitations present in previous airships designs of that kind, when considering their functioning at advanced operative position. Hydrogen is considered to be more effective than helium because of its low-cost production by hydrolysis, which process is nicely driven only by the photovoltaic energy. This paper presents a novel architectural concept of the buoyant balloon designed to increase the fire related safety, when applying hydrogen as the buoyant gas. The proposed buoyant volume is designed as a multi-balloon structure with a naturally ventilated shape, to ensure that hydrogen cannot reach the dangerous concentration level in the central airship balloon. This concept is expected to be the start of a novel hydrogen airship type, to be much safer than preceding ones.

The flapping flight is advantageous for its superior maneuverability and much more aerodynamically efficiency for the small size UAV when compared to the conventional steady-state aerodynamics solution. Especially, it is appropriate for the Micro-air-vehicle (MAV) propulsion system, where the flapping wings can generate the required thrust. This paper investigated such solution, based on the piezoelectric patches, which are attached to the flexible plates, in combination with an appropriate amplification mechanisms. The numerical and experimental flow analyses have been carried out for the piezoelectric flapping plate, in order to characterize the fluid structure interaction induced by the swinging movement of the oscillating plate.

A new highly biofidelic side impact dummy, the WorldSID 50th percentile male, has been developed under the supervision of the International Organization for Standardization in order to harmonize a number of existing side impact dummies in one single dummy. Momentum is growing for using the WorldSID in safety tests in the EU and the US. In the present study, two Euro-NCAP pole side impact tests were conducted to compare ES-2 and WorldSID responses in a mid-size SUV with respective seating positions as stipulated in the Euro-NCAP test conditions and fitted with the same side airbag. It was found that, compared with ES-2, the chest, abdomen and pelvis accelerations of WorldSID are more sensitive to variation in the applied external load transmitted by the deployed side airbag and door intrusion.

Implementation of appropriate safety measures, either from the viewpoint of a vehicle or the society or the infra-structure, it is an important issue to clearly understand the multi-dimension complicated real world accident scenarios. This study proposes a new method to easily capture and to extract the essence of such complicated multi-dimension mutual relationship by visualizing the results of SOM (Self Organizing Map). The FARS data from 2010 is used to generate a dataset comprised of 16,180 fatal passenger car drivers and 48 variables. The 16,180 fatal drivers were clustered using hierarchy cluster analysis method and mapped into a two-dimensional square with one dot representing one fatal driver using SOM.

Ammonia and hydrogen can be produced from water, air and excess renewable electricity (Power-to-fuel) and are therefore a promising alternative in the transition from fossil fuel energy to cleaner energy sources. An Homogeneous-Charge Compression-Ignition (HCCI) engine is therefore being studied to use both fuels under a variable blending ratio for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) production. Due to the high auto-ignition resistance of ammonia, hydrogen is required to promote and stabilize the HCCI combustion. Therefore the research objective is to investigate the HCCI combustion of varying hydrogen-ammonia blending ratios in a 16:1 compression ratio engine. A specific focus is put on maximizing the ammonia proportion as well as minimizing the NOx emissions that could arise from the nitrogen contained in the ammonia. A single-cylinder, constant speed, HCCI engine has been used with an intake pressure varied from 1 to 1.5 bar and with intake temperatures ranging from 428 to 473 K.

High-voltage nanosecond gas discharge has been shown to be an efficient way to ignite ultra-lean fuel air mixtures in a bulk volume, thanks to its ability to produce both high temperature and radical concentration in a large discharge zone. Recently, a feasibility study has been carried out to study plasma-assisted ignition under high-pressure high-temperature conditions similar to those inside an internal combustion engine. Ignition delay times were measured during the tests, and were shown to be decreasing under high-voltage plasma excitation. The discharge allowed instant control of ignition, and specific electrode geometry designs enabled volumetric ignition even at high-pressure conditions.

The control of the engine air system is an essential part for meeting the emission levels of current and upcoming legislation. Up to now different strategies were presented in the literature and also applied on real systems. Starting from simple single-input-single-output structures in combination with feedforward parts leading to advanced multi-input-multi-output approaches. Nevertheless, independent of the used control approach for each of them suitable references are necessary. Although it seems adequate to directly use the emission target quantities in a closed loop air system control, a fast and accurate measurement is seldom available. An alternative is to use intermediate quantities as references, like fresh air mass flow or oxygen concentrations, which represent the state of the air system. However, for control purposes each of these quantities has to be determined, i.e., measured or calculated.

In the general framework of the EU FP7 MAAT project, a novel green air transport architecture is under development. The paper presents the possible architectures for the cabin connections and the transfer modalities for people, crew and freight, for to the European project MAAT. Different architectures have been evaluated setting out to cover the structural and propulsive needs and to enable the transport modes between the Cruiser and the Feeders. The different possibilities are discussed conceptually, by considering the advantages and disadvantages of the presented configurations. The bases for future detailed design and research are established, as through such conceptual study the main parameters are identified and found to affect the general design of both airships and their operability. The aim of this paper is to specify the necessary elements, which are necessary to perform the docking operation by taking into account the prescribed Feeder-Cruiser geometries.

As an alternative to second generation ethanol, valeric esters can be produced from lignocellulose through levulinic acid. While some data on these fuels are available, only few experiments have been performed to analyze their combustion characteristics under engine conditions. Using a traditional spark ignition engine converted to mono-cylinder operation, we have investigated the engine performances and emissions of methyl and ethyl valerates. This paper compares the experimental results for pure valeric esters and for blends of 20% of esters in PRF95, with PRF95 as the reference fuel. The esters propagate faster than PRF95 which requires a slight change of ignition timing to optimise the work output. However, both the performances and the emissions are not significantly changed compared to the reference. Accordingly, methyl and ethyl valerate represent very good alternatives as biofuels for SI engines.

A correct prediction of the initial stages of the combustion process in SI engines is of great importance to understand how local flow conditions, fuel properties, mixture stratification and ignition affect the in-cylinder pressure development and pollutant formation. However, flame kernel growth is governed by many interacting processes including energy transfer from the electrical circuit to the gas phase, interaction between the plasma channel and the flow field, transition between different combustion regimes and gas expansion at very high temperatures. In this work, the authors intend to present a comprehensive, multi-dimensional model that can be used to predict the initial combustion stages in SI engines. In particular, the spark channel is represented by a set of Lagrangian particles where each one of them acts as a single flame kernel.

This paper describes a newly developed electrified powertrain that incorporates various energy-saving improvements and is intended for use on a 2013 model year EV. Based on a 2011 model year EV that was specifically designed and engineered as a mass-produced EV, this powertrain integrates the traction motor, inverter and charging unit to achieve a smaller, lighter package for expanding application to more vehicles. Integration of the motor and inverter in particular reduced the part count for enhanced assembly ease, in addition to reducing heat transfer, noise and vibration. The specific features described in the paper are the three points below. Improving the layout of the inverter parts in order to downsize and integrate the inverter with the motor. Reducing the transfer of heat from the motor to the inverter. Reducing the excitation forces of the motor and optimizing the inverter for noise and vibration.

In exhaust systems with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) a fast conversion of liquid urea to gaseous ammonia and a uniform distribution of the ammonia vapor upstream of the SCR catalyst are essential to reduce the nitric oxides efficiently. For the prediction of the mixing process and the transport of ammonia vapor with the CFD method an accurate description of the turbulent flow field is a basic requirement. This paper presents the comparison of simulation results using three different turbulence models (high-Re kε-RNG model, low-Re kω-SST model, Reynolds stress model) with measurements of the turbulent velocity field using Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA). The investigations were carried out for a SCR system with a swirl mixer on a cold flow test bench for two different volume flows. From the measured velocity signals different components of the Reynolds-tensor were derived.

The paper presents an integrated software tool for the hydroplaning simulation based on a weak coupled fluid-structure interaction model. The integrated modules are a flow solver FINE™/Hexa designed to solve the complex two-phase flow surrounding the tire numerically, based on unstructured hexahedral grids, the FEM solver MSC.Marc/MSC.Mentat which predicts the transients of the tire's structure, a coupling module for efficient and accurate transfer of the essential variables between the flow and FEM solvers and a deformation module which handles the CFD unstructured mesh to match the external surface of the tire. The accuracy of each module and the robustness of the integrated software are validated by the computational results obtained for rigid and deformable tires over a large range of speeds.