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This study simulates soot formation processes in diesel combustion using a large eddy simulation (LES) model, based on a one-equation subgrid turbulent kinetic energy model. This approach was implemented in the KIVA4 code, and used to model diesel spray combustion within a constant volume chamber. The combustion model uses a direct integration approach with a fast explicit ordinary differential equation (ODE) solver, and is additionally parallelized using OpenMP. The soot mass production within each computation cell was determined using a phenomenological soot formation model developed by Waseda University. This model was combined with the LES code mentioned above, and included the following important steps: particle inception during which acenaphthylene (A2R5) grows irreversibly to form soot; surface growth with driven by reactions with C2H2; surface oxidation by OH radical and O2 attack; and particle coagulation.

As a demand for vehicles of higher functionality grows, automakers and material suppliers are devoting increasing efforts to develop technologies for greater safety, lighter weight, higher corrosion resistance, and enhanced quietness. The resin-sandwiched vibration damping steel sheet (VDSS), developed as a highly functional material for reducing vehicle vibration and noise, has been used for oil pans1) and compartment partitions2). First applied for a structural dash panel of the new Mazda 929, a Zn-Ni electroplated VDSS which allows direct electric welding has contributed to greater weight reduction as well as improved quietness.

A method was studied for simultaneous zinc phosphating on aluminum and steel surfaces to obtain high corrosion resistance on aluminum surfaces, which conventional phosphatic processing could not provide with sufficient corrosion resistance. Since aluminum is protected by an oxide film on its surface, it has poor processability with zinc phosphating solutions applied to steel. An appropriate quantity of fluoride was therefore added to improve processing, and the coating film, aluminum composition and surface conditions were optimized to suppress filiform corrosion, which is characterized by string-like blisters of paint film starting from a paint defect. In addition, in view of the actual production environment, the corrosion resistance of the ground area made for readjustment after stamping was studied for the optimization of the processing solution.

In order to investigate the corrosion resistance of organic composite-coated steel sheets ( OCS ) in a real automotive environment, many kinds of corrosion tests were performed on test pieces and real automotive doors. Tests with a corrosive solution including iron rust were introduced to simulate the real corrosive environment of automotive doors. The relationship between the components of OCS and the corrosion resistance in the rust-including tests was examined. In addition, electrochemical studies were performed. Results indicate OCS has much better corrosion resistance than plated steel sheets with heavier coating weight in all tests. OCS shows excellent corrosion resistance in rust-free corrosive solution, however, some types of OCS do have corrosion concerns in rust-including tests. It became clear that these OCS types have an organic coating with lower cross-linking.

Magnesium has the lowest specific gravity of all metals used for structural members. The application of magnesium for a road wheel leads to improved vehicle handling and drivability because of the reduction of an unsprung weight. The authors have developed new magnesium alloy which shows excellent mechanical properties and attained a magnesium forged road wheel that is 30% lighter than aluminum wheels.

The objective of the present study is to analyze soot formation in diesel engine combustion by using multi-dimensional combustion simulations with a parallelized explicit ODE solver. Parallelized CHEMEQ2 was used to perform detailed chemical kinetics in KIVA-4 code. CHEMEQ2 is an explicit stiff ODE solver developed by Mott et al. which is known to be faster than traditional implicit ODE solvers, e.g., DVODE. In the present study, about eight times faster computation was achieved with CHEMEQ2 compared to DVODE when using a single thread. Further, by parallelizing CHEMEQ2 using OpenMP, the simulations could be run not only on calculation servers but also on desktop machines. The computation time decreases with the number of threads used. The parallelized CHEMEQ2 enabled combustion and emission characteristics, including detailed soot formation processes, to be predicted using KIVA-4 code with detailed chemical kinetics without the need for reducing the reaction mechanism.