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Conventional viscous shock absorbers, in parallel with suspension springs, passively dissipate the excitation energy from road irregularity into heat waste, to reduce the transferred vibration which causes the discomfort of passengers. Energy-harvesting shock absorbers, which have the potential of conversion of kinetic energy into electric power, have been proposed as semi-active suspension to achieve better balance between the energy consumption and suspension performance. Because of the high energy density of the rotary shock absorber, a rotational energy-harvesting shock absorber with mechanical motion rectifier (MMR) is used in this paper. This paper presents the assessment of vehicle dynamic performance with the proposed energy-harvesting shock absorber in braking process. Moreover, a PI controller is proposed to attenuate the negative effect due to the pitch motion.

Fuel quality has a significant influence on the combustion engine operation. In recent years the increasing concerns about environmental protection, energy saving, energy security and the requirements of protecting fuel injection and aftertreatment systems have been major driving forces for the Chinese fuel specification evolution. The major property changes in the evolution of Chinese national gasoline and diesel standards are introduced and the reasons behind these changes are analyzed in this paper. The gasoline fuel development from State I to State VI-B involved a decrease of sulfur, manganese, olefins, aromatics and benzene content. The diesel fuel quality improvement from State I to State VI included achieving low sulfur fuels and a cetane number (CN) increase. Provincial fuel standards, stricter than corresponding national standards, were implemented in economically developed areas in the past.

Due to the rapid development of road infrastructure and vehicle population in China, the fuel consumption and emission of on-road vehicles tested in China World Transient Vehicle Cycle (C-WTVC) cannot indicate the real driving results. But the test results in China Heavy-duty Commercial Vehicle Test Cycle-Coach (CHTC-C) based on the road driving conditions in China are closer to the actual driving data. In this paper, the model for predicting the performance of heavy-duty vehicles is established and validated. The fuel consumption and NOx emission of a Euro VI heavy-duty coach under C-WTVC and CHTC-C tests are calculated by employing the developed model. Furthermore, the fuel consumption of the test coach is optimized and its sensitivity to the driving factors is analyzed.

Low Speed Pre-Ignition (LSPI), also referred to as Stochastic Pre-Ignition (SPI), Superknock or Megaknock is an undesirable combustion phenomenon that limits the fuel economy, drivability, emissions and durability performance of modern turbocharged gasoline engines. Numerous studies have previously reported that the frequency of LSPI is sensitive to engine oil composition. One of these drivers is the concentration of Calcium, which is usually delivered in the form of a detergent in the additive package. Switching to completely all-Magnesium detergent and/or severely limiting the concentration of Ca in the engine oil have recently been proposed as potential means to reduce LSPI. In this work, we evaluate the impact of detergent type on LSPI performance as well as on other performance that the modern engine oil needs to deliver. Particularly the impact of detergent type on Fuel Economy performance is evaluated.

Transport vehicles consume a large amount of fuel with low efficiency, which is significantly affected by drivers' behaviors. An assessment system of eco-driving pattern for buses could identify the deficiencies of driver operation as well as assist transportation enterprises in driver management. This paper proposes an assessment method regarding drivers' economic efficiency, considering driving conditions. To this end, assessment indexes are extracted from driving economy theories and ranked according to their effect on fuel consumption, derived from a database of 135 buses using multiple regression. A layered structure of assessment indexes is developed with application of AHP, and the weight of each index is estimated. The driving pattern score could be calculated with these weights.

The interactions between automatic controls, physics, and driver is an important step towards highly automated driving. This study investigates the dynamical interactions between human-selected driving modes, vehicle controller and physical plant parameters, to determine how to optimally adapt powertrain control to different human-like driving requirements. A cyber-physical system (CPS) based framework is proposed for co-design optimization of the physical plant parameters and controller variables for an electric powertrain, in view of vehicle’s dynamic performance, ride comfort, and energy efficiency under different driving modes. System structure, performance requirements and constraints, optimization goals and methodology are investigated. Intelligent powertrain control algorithms are synthesized for three driving modes, namely sport, eco, and normal modes, with appropriate protocol selections. The performance exploration methodology is presented.

Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) combustion utilizes a port injection of high-volatile fuel to form a homogeneous charge and a direct injection of high ignitable fuel near the Top Dead Center (TDC) to trigger combustion. Compared to Conventional Diesel Combustion (CDC) with high injection pressures, HCII has the potential to achieve diesel-like thermal efficiency with significant reductions in NOx and PM emissions with relatively low-pressure injections, which would benefit the engine cost saving remarkably. In the first part of current investigation, experiments were conducted at medium load with single diesel injection strategy. HCII exhibited great potential of using low injection pressures to achieve low soot emissions. But the engine load for HCII was limited by high heat release rate. Thus, in the second and third part, experiments were performed at high and low load with double diesel injection strategy.

Metal foil is a widely used material in the automobile industry, which not only is the honeycomb barrier material but is also used as current collectors in Li-ion batteries. Plenty of studies proved that the mechanical property of the metal foil is quite different from that of the metal sheet because of the size effect on microscopic scale, as the metal foil shows a larger fracture stress and a lower ductility than the metal sheet. Meanwhile, the fracture behavior and accurate constitutive model of the metal foil with the consideration of the strain rate effect are widely concerned in further studies of battery safety and the honeycomb. This article conducted experiments on 8011H18 aluminum foil, aiming to explore the quasi-static and dynamic tension testing method and the anisotropic mechanical behavior of the very thin foil. Two metal foil dog-bone specimens and three types of notched specimens were tested with a strain rate ranging from 2 × 10−4/s to 40/s and various stress states.

Traffic congestions are increasingly severe in urban areas, especially at the merging areas of the ramps and the arterial roads. Because of the complex conflict relationship of the vehicles in ramps and arterial roads in terms of time-spatial constraints, it is challenging to coordinate the motion of these vehicles, which may easily cause congestions at the merging areas. The connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) provides potential opportunities to solve this problem. A centralized merging control method for CAVs is proposed in this paper, which can organize the traffic movements in merging areas efficiently and safely. In this method, the merging control model is built to formulate the vehicle coordination problem in merging areas, which is then transformed to the discrete nonlinear optimization form. A simulation model is built to verify the proposed method.

The combustion characteristics and soot emissions of three types of fuels were studied in a high pressure and temperature vessel. In order to achieve better volatility, proper cetane number and high oxygen content, the newly designed WDEP fuel was proposed and investigated. It is composed of wide distillation fuel (WD), PODE3-6 mixture (PODEn) and ethanol. For comparison, the test on WD and the mixture of PODEn-ethanol (EP) are also conducted. OH* chemiluminescence during the combustion was measured and instantaneous PLII was also applied to reveal the soot distribution. Abel transformation was adopted to calculate the total soot of axisymmetric flame. The results show that WDEP has similar ignition delays and flame lift-off lengths to those of WD at 870-920 K. But the initial ignition locations of WDEP flame in different cycles were more concentrated, particularly under the condition of low oxygen atmosphere.

Plug-in electric vehicle (PHEV) has a promising prospect to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and optimize engine operating in high-efficiency region. According to the maximum electric power and all-electric range, PHEVs are divided into two categories, including “all-electric PHEV” and “blended PHEV” and the latter provides a potential for more rational energy distribution because engine participates in vehicle driving during aggressive acceleration not just by motor. However, the frequent use of engine may result in severe emissions especially in low state of charge (SOC) and ahead of catalyst light-off. This study quantitatively investigates the impact of oil viscosity and driving mode (hybrid/conventional) on oil dilution and emissions including particle number (PN).

In this paper, the differences between multi-hole and single-hole spray contour under the same conditions were compared by using high-speed photography. The difference between the contour area of multi-hole and that of single-hole spray was used as a parameter to describe the degree of spray collapse. Three dimensionless parameters (i.e. degree of superheat, degree of undercooling, and nozzle pressure ratio) were applied to characterize inside-nozzle thermodynamic, outside-nozzle thermodynamic and kinetic factors, respectively. In addition, the relationship between the three dimensionless parameters and the spray collapse was analyzed. A semi-empirical equation was proposed for evaluation of the degree of collapse based on dimensionless parameters of flash and non-flash boiling sprays respectively.

A novel fault tolerant brake strategy for In-wheel motor driven electric vehicles based on integral sliding mode control and optimal online allocation is proposed in this paper. The braking force distribution and redistribution, which is achieved in online control allocation segment, aim at maximizing energy efficiency of the vehicle and isolating faulty actuators simultaneously. The In-wheel motor can generate both driving torque and braking torque according to different vehicle dynamic demands. In braking procedure, In-wheel motors generate electric braking torque to achieve energy regeneration. The strategy is designed to make sure that the stability of vehicle can be guaranteed which means vehicle can follow desired trajectory even if one of the driven motor has functional failure.

In low-temperature environment, heat supply requires considerable energy, which significantly increases energy consumption and shortens the mileage of electric vehicle. In the fuel cell vehicles, waste heat generated by the fuel cell system can supply heat for vehicle. In this paper, a thermal management system is designed for a the fuel cell interurban bus. Thermal management strategy aiming at temperature regulation for the fuel cell stack and the passenger compartment and minimal energy consumption is proposed. System model is developed and simulated based on AMESim and Matlab/Simulink co-simulation. Simulation results show that the fuel cell system can provide about 78 % energy of maximum heat requirement in -20 °C ambient temperature environment.

Combustion visualizations were carried out in a constant volume vessel to study the partially premixed combustion of a gasoline-like fuel using high speed imaging. The test fuel (G80H20) is composed by volume 80% commercial gasoline and 20% n-heptane. The effects of ambient gas composition, ambient temperature and injection pressure on G80H20 combustion characteristics were analyzed. Meanwhile, a comparison of the EGR effect on combustion process between G80H20 and diesel was made. Four ambient gas conditions that represent the in-cylinder gas compositions of a heavy-duty diesel engine with EGR ratios of 0%, 20%, 40% and 60% were used to simulate EGR conditions. Variables also include two ambient temperature (910K and 870K) and two injection pressure (20 MPa and 50 MPa) conditions.

Automotive safety is always the focus of consumers, the selling point of products, the focus of technology. In order to achieve automatic driving, interconnection with the outside world, human-automatic system interaction, the security connotation of intelligent and connected vehicles (ICV) changes: information security is the basis of its security. Functional safety ensures that the system is operating properly. Behavioral safety guarantees a secure interaction between people and vehicles. Passive security should not be weakened, but should be strengthened based on new constraints. In terms of information safety, the threshold for attacking cloud, pipe, and vehicle information should be raised to ensure that ICV system does not fail due to malicious attacks. The cloud is divided into three cloud platforms according to functions: ICVs private cloud, TSP cloud, public cloud.

Polyoxymethylene Dimethyl Ether (PODEn) is a promising green additive to diesel fuel, owing to the unique chemical structure (CH3O[CH2O]nCH3, n≥2) and high cetane number. Together with the general wide-distillation fuel (WDF), which has an attractive potential to reduce the cost of production of vehicle fuel, the oxygenated WDF with PODEn can help achieve a high efficiency and low emissions of soot, NOx, HC, and CO simultaneously. In this paper, the first detailed reaction mechanism (225 species, 1082 reactions) which can describe the ignition characteristics of PODE1 and PODE3 at low temperature was developed.

This study compared the combustion and emission characteristics of Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) and Direct Injection Compression Ignition (DICI) modes in a boosted and high compression ratio (17) engine fueled with gasoline and gasoline/diesel blend (80% gasoline by volume, denoted as G80). The injection strategy was adjusted to achieve the highest thermal efficiency at different intake pressures. The results showed that Low Temperature Heat Release (LTHR) was not observed in gasoline HCCI. However, 20% additional diesel could lower down the octane number and improve the autoignition reactivity of G80, which contributed to a weak LTHR, accounting for approximately 5% of total released heat. The combustion efficiency in gasoline DICI was higher than those in gasoline HCCI and G80 HCCI, while the exhaust loss and heat transfer loss in DICI mode were higher than those in HCCI mode.

The traditional vehicle-based approach to measuring the effect of oil-related fuel economy has relied on separate oil-aging and measurement processes where oil-aging takes place using an established driving protocol like the EPA Approved Mileage Accumulation (AMA) Driving Schedule for vehicle aging, then at set mileage intervals fuel economy is assessed using procedures such as the EPA FTP75 and Highway Fuel Economy emission test protocols described in 40 CFR, Parts 86 and 600. These test methods are useful for producing discrete snapshots of fuel economy at set mileage intervals but are unable to provide continuous information about oil-related changes in fuel economy. During the tests, the vehicle's fuel economy is indirectly calculated using a carbon-balance method of the bagged sample of dilute tailpipe emissions that effectively integrates the fuel economy of the vehicle during the sample interval which varies between eight and fifteen minutes.

A host of bench and engine tests have historically been used by formulators to assess fuel economy when developing engine oils for gasoline-powered passenger cars and light trucks. Some of these methods assess basic lubricant physical properties such as hydrodynamic, boundary and thin-film friction, and are useful for quickly screening experimental components and formulations. Some methods assess rotational drag of a motored engine and offer insights into the friction of various engine parts. Still other methods directly measure the energy consumption in a test engine running in a research laboratory and thus come the closest to simulating a consumer-operated vehicle. Each test method has inherent limitations and is based on underlying assumptions, producing artifacts that must first be understood and then analyzed for relevance to either industry lubricant specifications or real world fuel economy performance.