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Active regeneration experiments were performed on a production diesel aftertreatment system containing a diesel oxidation catalyst and catalyzed particulate filter (CPF) using blends of soy-based biodiesel. The effects of biodiesel on particulate matter oxidation rates in the filter were explored. These experiments are a continuation of the work performed by Chilumukuru et al., in SAE Technical Paper No. 2009-01-1474, which studied the active regeneration characteristics of the same aftertreatment system using ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel. Experiments were conducted using a 10.8 L 2002 Cummins ISM heavy-duty diesel engine. Particulate matter loading of the filter was performed at the rated engine speed of 2100 rpm and 20% of the full engine load of 1120 Nm. At this engine speed and load the passive oxidation rate is low. The 17 L CPF was loaded to a particulate matter level of 2.2 g/L.

Energy management is one of the key challenges for the development of Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) due to its complex powertrain structure. Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation provides an open software architecture which enables rapid prototyping HEV energy management system. This paper presents the investigation of the energy management system for a single shaft parallel hybrid electric vehicle using dSPACE eDrive HIL system. The parallel hybrid electric vehicle, energy management system, and low-level Electronic Control Unit (ECU) were modeled using dSPACE Automotive Simulation Models and dSPACE blocksets. Vehicle energy management is achieved by a vehicle-level controller called hybrid ECU, which controls vehicle operation mode and torque distribution among Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and electric motor. The individual powertrain components such as ICE, electric motor, and transmission are controlled by low-level ECUs.

The objective of this research was to evaluate the effects that higher fluid injection pressures and nozzle geometry have on compound fuel injector nozzle performance. Higher pressures are shown to significantly reduce droplet size, increase the discharge coefficient and reduce the overall size of a nozzle spray. It is also shown that the geometry has a significant effect on nozzle performance, and it can be manipulated to give a desired spray shape.

Environmental awareness and fuel economy legislation has resulted in greater emphasis on developing more fuel efficient vehicles. As such, achieving fuel economy improvements has become a top priority in the automotive field. Companies are constantly investigating and developing new advanced technologies, such as hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, improved turbo-charged gasoline direct injection engines, new efficient powershift transmissions, and lighter weight vehicles. In addition, significant research and development is being performed on energy management control systems that can improve fuel economy of vehicles. Another area of research for improving fuel economy and environmental awareness is based on improving the customer's driving behavior and style without significantly impacting the driver's expectations and requirements.

In the automotive industry, lost foam casting is a relatively new technology, which is gaining popularity among manufacturers. Lost foam casting is a process in which an expanded polystyrene pattern is formed into the shape of the part to be cast. More complex parts are fabricated by simply gluing several simple patterns together. The pattern is then coated with a refractory material consisting of a mineral mixture and binders. Finally, hot metal is poured into the pattern, evaporating the expanded polystyrene and taking shape of the coating shell. However, the automotive industry has observed that a significant number of these fabricated, coated patterns are damaged, or do not meet specifications prior to casting. These are not reusable and inevitably are landfilled. It is the goal of this project to develop a simple, reliable, and inexpensive technology to recover expanded polystyrene from the glue and coating constituents.

The use of cutting fluid in machining operations not only poses a health risk to workers but also creates environmental challenges associated with fluid treatment and disposal. In an effort to minimize these concerns and eliminate the costs associated with cutting fluids, e.g., purchase, maintenance, and treatment, dry machining is increasingly being considered as an alternative. This paper is focused on comparing dry and wet machining approaches from several perspectives, including air quality, product quality, and economics. Both experimental and analytical work is presented. Experiments have been performed to determine the effect cutting fluid has on product quality and aerosol generation in the wet and dry turning of gray cast iron. To compare costs in wet and dry turning, a cost model, which includes cutting fluid-related components, has also been established.

In sheet metal forming, metal flow into the die is determined by the restraint imposed by both the blankholder force and the drawbead penetration. This paper describes an experimental investigation in which both advanced binder force and drawbead technologies are used to study their effect on draw depth in the drawing of an AA6111-T4 generic non-symmetric panel. Multipoint binder loading using individual pin force adjustment applied to especially designed binder structures as well as the use of variable blankholder force were investigated in one laboratory in Germany. In another laboratory in the USA, active drawbeads were applied to the drawing of the generic panel. The results of both approaches, which are shown to be successful, are presented and discussed.

In this paper, the conversion of a production SUV to a hybrid electric vehicle with a drive system utilizing a planetary power-split transmission is presented. The uniqueness of this design comes from its ability to couple the advantages of a parallel hybrid with the advantages of a series hybrid. Depending on operating conditions and recent operating history, the drive system transitions to one of several driving modes. The drive system consists of a planetary gear set coupled to an alternator, motor, and internal combustion engine. It performs the power-split operation without the need for belt drives or clutching devices. The effects on driveability, manufacturing, fuel economy, emissions, and performance are presented along with the design, selection, and implementation of all of the vehicle conversion components.

The National Science Foundation recently sponsored a Workshop on Environmentally Benign Manufacturing (EBM) for the Transportation Industries. The objective of the workshop was to determine future directions of research in the EBM area and to construct a roadmap for development of future research programs. While research in the fields of Design for the Environment (DfE) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) have focused on the product and product life cycles, an additional focus is needed to find and develop processes with less environmental impact within the manufacturing environment. This workshop explored EBM issues with respect to the enterprise, the products, the processes and the materials.

Battery management system (BMS) plays a key role in the power management of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). It measures the state of charge (SOC), state of health (SOH) of the battery, protects the battery package and extends cells' life cycles. For HEV applications, lithium-ion battery is usually selected as electric power source due to its high specific energy, high energy density, and long life cycle. However, the non-linear characteristic of a Li-ion battery, complicated electro-chemical model, and environmental factors, raises the difficulties in the real-time estimation of the SOC for a Li-ion battery. To address this challenge, a BMS for HEVs is modeled with MATLAB/Simulink. In addition, a regenerative braking control strategy is proposed to determine the magnitude of the regenerative torque based on the battery SOC.

Aluminum based brake rotors have been a priority research topic in the DOE 1999 Aluminum Industry Roadmap for the Automobile Market. After fourteen years, no satisfactory technology has been developed to solve the problem of aluminum's low working temperatures except the steel clad aluminum (SCA) brake technology. This technology research started at Michigan Technological University (MTU) in 2001 and has matured recently for commercial productions. The SCA brake rotor has a solid body and replaces the traditional convective cooling of a vented rotor with conductive cooling to a connected aluminum wheel. Much lower temperatures result with the aluminum wheel acting as a great heat sink/radiator. The steel cladding further increases the capability of the SCA rotor to withstand higher surface temperatures. During the road tests of SCA rotors on three cars, significant gas mileage improvement was found; primarily attributed to the unique capability of the SCA rotor on pad drag reduction.

Studies have been conducted at Michigan Technological University (MTU) for over twenty years on methods for characterizing and controlling particulate emissions from heavy-duty diesel engines and the resulting effects on regulated and unregulated emissions. During that time, control technologies have developed in response to more stringent EPA standards for diesel emissions. This paper is a review of: 1) modern emission control technologies, 2) emissions sampling and chemical, physical and biological characterization methods and 3) summary results from recent studies conducted at MTU on heavy-duty diesel engines with a trap and an oxidation catalytic converter (OCC) operated on three different fuels. Control technology developments discussed are particulate traps, catalysts, advances in engine design, the application of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), and modifications of fuel formulations.

In this study, the effects of an oxidation catalytic converter (OCC) on regulated and unregulated emissions from a 1991 prototype Cummins I.10-310 diesel engine fueled with a 0.01 weight percent sulfur fuel were investigated. The OCC's effects were determined by measuring and comparing selected raw exhaust emissions with and without the platinum-based OCC installed in the exhaust system, with the engine operated at three steady-state modes. It was found that the OCC had no significant effect on oxides of nitrogen (NOX) and nitric oxide (NO) at any mode, but reduced hydrocarbon (HC) emmissions by 60 to 70 percent. The OCC reduced total particulate matter (TPM) levels by 27 to 54 percent, primarily resulting from 53 to 71 percent reductions of the soluble organic fraction (SOF). The OCC increased sulfate (SO42-) levels at two of the three modes (modes 9 and 10), but the overall SO42- contribution to TPM was less than 6 percent at all modes due to the low sulfur level of the fuel.

This research quantifies the effects of a copper fuel additive on the regulated [oxides of nitrogen (NOx), hydrocarbons (HC) and total particulate matter (TPM)] and unregulated emissions [soluble organic fraction (SOF), vapor phase organics (XOC), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), nitro-PAH, particle size distributions and mutagenic activity] from a 1988 Cummins LTA10 diesel engine using a low sulfur fuel. The engine was operated at two steady state modes (EPA modes 9 and 11, which are 75 and 25% load at rated speed, respectively) and five additive levels (0, 15, 30, 60 and 100 ppm Cu by mass) with and without a ceramic trap. Measurements of PAH and mutagenic activity were limited to the 0, 30 and 60 ppm Cu levels. Data were also collected to assess the effect of the additive on regeneration temperature and duration. Copper species collected within the trap were identified and exhaust copper concentrations quantified.

The destruction of organic contaminants in waste water for closed systems, such as that of the International Space Station, is crucial due to the need for recycling the waste water. A cocurrent upflow bubble column using oxygen as the gas phase oxidant and packed with catalyst particles consisting of a noble metal on an alumina substrate is being developed for this process. This paper addresses the development of a plug-flow model that will predict the performance of this three phase reactor system in destroying a multicomponent mixture of organic contaminants in water. Mass balances on a series of contaminants and oxygen in both the liquid and gas phases are used to develop this model. These mass balances incorporate the gas-to-liquid and liquid-to-particle mass transfer coefficients, the catalyst effectiveness factor, and intrinsic reaction rate.

The objective in this research is to investigate the effects of variable blank holder force (VBHF) on the material formability, due to its effect on the strain path. It is found in a recent study [9] that VBHF does not significantly affect the overall trend of the strain path. This strain path in deep drawing process is linear for the materials in the flange and under punch face, and is roughly bi-linear for the material around the punch nose. The second segment of the strain path in the punch nose region is plane-strain. VBHF, however, affects the strain ratio ρ1 = ε2/ε1 of the first segment of the bi-linear strain path. These effects, especially ρ1, on limit strain were studied using M-K method. A strain path dependent modified forming limit diagram (MFLD) was calculated based on the actual strain path. It is found that the MFLD is strongly dependent on ρ1.

The Michigan Tech sheet metal strip test apparatus with controllable drawbead penetration simultaneously performs two different tests for friction coefficient. The flat binder coefficient of friction and die shoulder coefficient of friction are complex functions of sheet tension, surface topography, lubrication, and sliding distance. The average coefficient of friction for the drawbead and blankholder region at maximum drawbead penetration can be predicted by taking the average of the binder coefficient of friction and the die shoulder coefficient of friction.

The formulation of mathematical model for the computational simulation of transient temperature response and phase change of refrigerant in a vapor condenser of an automotive air conditioning unit is described. A demonstrative computational simulation of a sample air cooled vapor condenser charged with Freon 12 is presented. The computational analysis predicts an initial surge and followed by an oscillation of the condensate outflow rate from the condenser when the air-conditioning unit is started, and the tube length required for complete condensation of inflow vapor is a maximum value at start up. The rise of the temperatures of the condenser tubes and cooling air flow during the start-up and load change operations rate found to be gradual but the scale of these temperature changes are considered small.

The goals of this research are to understand the regeneration process in ceramic (Cordierite) monolith traps using a copper fuel additive and to investigate the various conditions that lead to trap regeneration failure. The copper additive lowers the trap regeneration temperature from approximately 500 °C to 375 °C and decreases the time necessary for regeneration. Because of these characteristics, it is important to understand the effect of the additive on regeneration when excessive particulate matter accumulation occurs in the trap. The effects of particulate mass loading on regeneration temperatures and regeneration time were studied for both the controlled (engine operated at full load rated speed) and uncontrolled (trap regeneration initiated at full load rated speed after which the engine was cut to idle) conditions. The trap peak temperatures were higher for the uncontrolled than the controlled regeneration.

The goal of this research was to determine an empirical method of relating the droplet sizes and the spray patterns to the parameters and the geometries of the compound nozzles. Two different types of compound nozzles were studied, the compound silicon micro machined nozzle and the compound metal disk nozzle. Several different orifice geometries of each nozzle type were examined. The injector components upstream of the compound nozzle of two different types of injectors were also studied. A nondimensional characterization of the droplet sizes and the mass flow rates was proposed. The results of this study show that there exists optimum geometric features that will produce sprays with the minimum steady state and dynamic Sauter mean diameter. The spray of a compound nozzle can be characterized by the atomization efficiency and the discharge coefficient. Nozzle testing results show that many flow characteristics are developed in the compound nozzle.