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Vehicle hood styling has significant influence on headform kinematics in assessment tests of pedestrian impact protection performance. Pedestrian headform kinematics on vehicle front-end models with different hood styling characteristics is analyzed based on finite element modeling. More elevated feature lines near hood boundary and the following continuous hood surface towards fender will result in a different headform motion. It can lead to larger deformation space, more rotation and earlier rebound of the headform impactor, which will benefit the head impact protection performance. In addition, hood geometry characteristics such as hood angle and curvature have effects on structural stiffness. Therefore, inclusion of considerations on pedestrian head protection into the vehicle hood styling design stage may lead to a more effective and efficient engineering design process on headform impact analysis.

To provide a feasible transitional solution from all-by-human driving style to fully autonomous driving style, this paper proposed concept and its control algorithm of a robust lane-keeping ‘co-pilot’ system. In this a semi-autonomous system, Learning based Model Predictive Control (LBMPC) theory is employed to improve system's performance in target state tracking accuracy and controller's robustness. Firstly, an approximate LTI model which describes driver-vehicle-road closed-loop system is set up and real system's deviations from the LTI system resulted by uncertainties in the model are regarded as bounded disturbance. The LTI model and bounded disturbances make up a nominal model. Secondly, a time-varying model which is composed of LTI model and an ‘oracle’ component is designed to observe the possible disturbances numerically and it is online updated using Extended Kalman Filter (EKF).

The deformation of injector components cannot be disregarded as the pressure of the system increases. Deformation directly affects the characteristics of needle movement and injection quantity. In this study, structural deformation of the nozzle, the needle and the control plunger under different pressures is calculated by a simulation model. The value of the deformation of injector components is calculated and the maximum deformation location is also determined. Furthermore, the calculated results indicates that the deformation of the control plunger increases the control chamber volume and the cross-section area between the needle and the needle seat. A MATLAB model is established to The influence of structural deformation on needle movement characteristics and injection quantity is investigate by a numerical model. The results show that the characteristic points of needle movement are delayed and injection quantity increases due to the deformation.

In order to improve the anti-disturbance performance of engine-load and the effect on speed control for the diesel engine, the paper presents the fuzzy-PID speed control strategy in the architecture of torque-based control. The engine-load estimation algorithm is designed based on the mean-value-model and crankshaft dynamics model, and the estimation precision is validated by engine test in both steady and dynamic conditions. Through the experiment verification of the diesel engine, the fuzzy-PID control strategy based on load estimation can significantly improve the anti-disturbance performance of engine-load in the speed control.

The dynamic properties of disc rotor play important role in the NVH performance of a disc brake system. Disc rotor in general is a centrosymmetric structure. It has many repeated-root modes within the interested frequency range and they may have significant influence on squeal occurrence. A pair of repeated-root modes is in nature one vibration mode. However, in current complex eigenvalue analysis model and relevant analysis methods, repeated-root modes are processed separately. This may lead to contradictory result. This paper presents methods to deal with repeated-root modes in substructure modal composition (SMC) analysis to avoid the contradiction. Through curve-fitting technique, the modal shape coefficients of repeated-root modes are expressed in an identical formula. This formula is used in SMC analysis to obtain an integrated SMC value to represent the total influence of two repeated-root modes.

With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. To seek for an optimized volumetric ratio for ABE-diesel blends, the previous work in our team has experimentally investigated and analyzed the combustion features of ABE-diesel blends with different volumetric ratio (A: B: E: 6:3:1; 3:6:1; 0:10:0, vol. %) in a constant volume chamber. It was found that an increased amount of acetone would lead to a significant advancement of combustion phasing whereas butanol would compensate the advancing effect. Both spray dynamic and chemistry reaction dynamic are of great importance in explaining the unique combustion characteristic of ABE-diesel blend. In this study, a semi-detailed chemical mechanism is constructed and used to model ABE-diesel spray combustion in a constant volume chamber.

An opposed piston two-stroke engine is more suitable for use in an unmanned aerial vehicle because of its small size, excellent self-balancing, stable operation, and low noise. Consequently, in this study, based on experimental data for a prototype opposed piston two-stroke engine, numerical simulation models were established using GT-POWER for 1D simulation and AVL-FIRE for 3D CFD simulation. The mesh grid and solver parameters for the numerical model of the CFD simulation were determined to guarantee the accuracy of the numerical simulation, before studying and optimizing the ventilation efficiency of the engine with different dip angles. Furthermore, the fuel spray and combustion were analyzed and optimized in details.

Hydrodynamic torque converter parameter integrated optimization design system is established based on tri-dimensional flow field theory. Design segments such as optimization initial values searching by meanline theory, cascade solid modeling, structure mesh of flow passage, CFD(computational fluid dynamics), DOE(design of experiment), RSM(response surface model)and optimization algorithm are integrated in this system and therefore a three dimensional optimization design method for hydrodynamic torque converter is presented and realized. An optimization design instance is accomplished by workstation computer cluster, and its result shows that speed and accuracy of design are improved and design system based on 3D flow field theory is accurate and effective.

Performances of a centrifugal turbocharger compressor are investigated and validated in this paper. Based on the validation results, numerical optimizations are performed using ANN and CFD methods. Different impeller geometry with free parameters controlling stacking laws, end-wall, blade sectional camber curves and corresponding performances are used as input layer of ANN in the optimization, while adiabatic total-to-total efficiency and total pressure ratio are used as output layer of the optimization cycle. With this method, the performances of the compressor investigated in this paper are improved notably.

High fidelity mathematical vehicle models that can accurately capture the dynamics of car suspension system are critical in vehicle dynamics studies. System identification techniques can be employed to determine model type, order and parameters. Such techniques are well developed and usually used on linear models. Unfortunately, shock absorbers have nonlinear characteristics that are non-negligible, especially with regard the vehicle's vertical dynamics. In order to effectively employ system identification techniques on a vehicle, a nonlinear mathematical shock absorber model must be developed and then coupled to the linear vehicle model. Such an approach addresses the nonlinear nature of the shock absorber for system identification purposes. This paper presents an approach to integrate the nonlinear shock absorber model into the vehicle model for system identification.

This study concerns the generation of response surfaces for kinematics and injury prediction in pedestrian impact simulations using human body model. A 1000-case DOE (Design of Experiments) study with a Latin Hypercube sampling scheme is conducted using a finite element pedestrian human body model and a simplified parametric vehicle front-end model. The Kriging method is taken as the approach to construct global approximations to system behavior based on results calculated at various points in the design space. Using the response surface models, human lower limb kinematics and injuries, including impact posture, lateral bending angle, ligament elongation and bone fractures, can be quickly assessed when either the structural dimensions or the structural behavior of the vehicle front-end design change. This will aid in vehicle front-end design to enhance protection of pedestrian lower limbs.

This paper studies a control algorithm for fuel cell/battery city buses. The output power of the fuel cell is controlled by a D.C. converter, and the output ports of the converter and the battery are connected in parallel to supply power for the electric motor. One way to prolong service life is to have the fuel cell system to deliver a steady-state power. However, because of fluctuations in the bus voltage and uncertainness in the D.C. converter, the output power of the fuel cell system changes drastically. A closed-loop control algorithm is necessary to eliminate the errors between the output and target power of the fuel cell system. The algorithm is composed of two parts, the feed forward one and the feedback one. Influences of the bus voltage and D.C. efficiency are compensated automatically in the feedback algorithm by using a PI algorithm. The stability and robustness of the algorithm is analyzed.

This paper presents a control system development for a yaw motion control of a vehicle-trailer combination using the integrated control of active front steer (AFS) and differential brake (DB). A 21 degree of freedom (dof) vehicle-trailer combination model that represents a large SUV and a medium one-axle trailer has been developed for this study. A model reference sliding mode controller (MRSMC) has been developed to generate the desired yaw moment. Based on the understanding of advantages and limitations of AFS and DB, a new integrated control algorithm was proposed. The simulation result shows that integrated control of AFS and DB can restrain the trailer's oscillation effectively and shows less longitudinal speed drop and higher stable margin compared to the DB activated only case while maintaining the yaw stability.

In this paper, the finite element model for static analysis of an electric tractor's frame is presented firstly, and the rigidity and strength of one electric tractor's frame is calculated. Based upon the analysis results, the topology and shape of this electric tractor's frame is optimized. As to the topology optimization, the optimization goal under multiple load cases is defined and the frame is optimized by two steps-one is to determine the position of the transverse rails using solid elements which can simulate the material-filling space, another is to obtain the shape of the frame in which shell elements are applied as to increase the calculation efficiency. After the topology optimization the frame's stiffness is improved significantly but there still is local stress concentration. So the shape of the stress concentration area is optimized using control points method, and the greatest stress is reduced below the strength limits.

A flexible multi-body system dynamics model of crank system is established based on MSC/ADAMS with the purpose of modeling the crank in internal-combustion engine accurately. The film hydrodynamics model is built up through linking ADAMS and elasticity hydrodynamics subroutines. Coupling analysis between multi-flexible body system dynamics and hydrodynamic lubrication of crank system is processed. Results between the model with the function of film and without the function are compared. Then the journal center loci are given. The effects of different factors such as pressure, temperature, rotating speed and load on the journal center loci are also analyzed.

In order to meet the need of high pressure common rail diesel engine, calibration for injection quantity and basic MAP of electronic-controlled injector are made. Combining with testing data, influencing factors for consistency and identity of injecting fuel in electronic-controlled injector are analyzed, in the condition of small quantity, controlled-pressure undulation quantity and injecting pulse revising are presented to achieve the respective demand. Primary basic map for common rail pressure and injecting fuel are fixed with alterable step method, and calibration of fuel quantity MAP is made on bench test. Finally test of electronic-controlled injector equipped in diesel engine is finished, testing result showed that calibration process and method are reasonable.

Contact dynamic characteristics of an internal combustion engine structure were studied by the finite element method and experimental verification. Based on theoretical analysis, contact modal calculation of an internal-combustion engine with finite element method is carried out by the ADINA software. Dynamic behavior of the entire engine structure was investigated. Rigid bar connection and coupling connection were introduced for the purpose of comparison with contact analysis and experiment results. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical analysis and FEM results. From the study, it can be demonstrated that dynamic behavior of the engine structure with a large preload shows linear characteristics. Compared with the other models, the procedure presented in this paper is more effective and useful in view of operational time and experience of analysts.

For the application of advanced clean combustion technologies, such as diesel HCCI/LTC, a compressor with high efficiency over a broad operation range is required to supply a high amount of EGR with minimum pumping loss. A compressor with high pitch of vaneless diffuser would substantially improve the flow range of the compressor, but it is at the cost of compressor efficiency, especially at low mass flow area where most of the city driving cycles resides. In present study, an ultra low solidity compressor vane diffuser was numerically investigated. It is well known that the flow leaving the impeller is highly distorted, unsteady and turbulent, especially at relative low mass flow rate and near the shroud side of the compressor. A conventional vaned diffuser with high stagger angle could help to improve the performance of the compressor at low end. However, adding diffuser vane to a compressor typically restricts the flow range at high end.

In this paper, a 2-DOF experimental equipment of active suspension is developed. This system is hydro-pneumatic type and is controlled through oil flow. A control strategy based on output feedback and frequency shaping is proposed and realized on this model. Output feedback can reduce the number of system states that should be measured and thus simplify the complexity and improve the reliability of the system. Because of the different human sensitivity to different frequency ranges of vibration, it is necessary to pay effort on the suppression of vibration according to human sensitivity. Frequency shaping technology is thus applied on performance index to improve the ride quality. Several types of measurement versions are investigated and optimized. Simulation results indicate that using sprung mass velocity and suspension deflection, the system performance can approach the full-state feedback system performance.

On the basis of modular pulse converter (MPC) exhaust system the authors present a new swirl exhaust system. Structural parameters on the swirl exhaust system and MPC system for N8160ZC diesel engine were calculated by a mathematical optimum method, and the two systems were tested under the same engine operation for comparison. Experimental results show that the swirl exhaust system has a better engine performance under most of the operating conditions than MPC system, but worse under the low-speed and part-load conditions. In order to understand the mechanism of this swirl exhaust system well, a three-dimensional particle dynamic analyzer (3D-PDA) was utilized to measure the steady turbulent airflow in a swirl three-branched model. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code KIVA was modified to simulate the flows. Computational results are in good agreement with measuring ones and reveal the swirl flow behavior in the junction.