Search Results

After the turn of the century, growing social attention has been paid to environmental concerns, especially the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and it comes down to a personal daily life concern which will affect the purchasing decision of vehicles in the future. Among all the sources of greenhouse gas emissions, the transportation industry is the primary target of reduction and almost every automotive company pours unprecedented amounts of money to reengineer the vehicle technologies for better fuel efficiency and reduced CO2 emission. Besides those efforts paid for sheer improvements of genuine vehicle technologies, NISSAN testified that “connectivity” with outside servers contributed a lot to reduce fuel consumption, thus the less emission of GHG, with two major factors; 1. detouring the traffic congestions with the support of probe-based real-time traffic information and 2. providing Eco-driving advices for the better driving behavior to prompt the better usage of energy.

The authors worked in the Engine Department at Nakajima Aircraft Co. from 1936 to 1945. Nakagawa was in the Engine Design Department, where he was involved in designing the air-cooled, radial double-row 14-cylinder 1,100 hp Sakae Model 20 engine and the radial 18-cylinder 1,800 - 2,000 hp Homare engine. Mizutani was a field engineer for these two engines and other engines. During that period we gained much experience in fuel and lubrication systems. Before the authors joined Nakajima, the company's engine development team had already developed a carburetor-based fueling system, which was subsequently used in all Nakajima engines. From 1941 on, all newly designed engines had to use 87-92 motor octane fuel by order of the Army and Navy. It was a very difficult task to change the engine specifications to meet this requirement, particularly for the Homare engine, which was initially designed for 100-octane fuel. The authors explain various steps taken to overcome this difficulty.

A number of reports have been published in recent years concerning research work that is underway in Europe. America and Japan on navigation systems for vehicles. The systems reported on to date employ a variety of position detection sensors, such as geomagnetic sensors, gyrocompasses and loran receivers. However, the literature contains virtually no reports of automobile navigation systems that make use of a Global Positioning System (GPS) as a means of detecting and determining the location a vehicle. The authors have developed a GPS automobile navigation system that is intended to be one subsystem of a cinorehensive on-board information system. The total system incorporates car telephone data communication capabilities as well as various functions for centralized operation of the vehicle equipment. This navigation system can accurately locate a vehicle's position using position data received from GPS satellites together with data supplied by geomagnetic sensors.

Because of rising demands to improve aerodynamic performance owing to its impact on vehicle dynamics, efforts were previously made to reduce aerodynamic lift and yawing moment based on steady-state measurements of aerodynamic forces. In recent years, increased research on dynamic aerodynamics has partially explained the impact of aerodynamic forces on vehicle dynamics. However, it is difficult to measure aerodynamic forces while a vehicle is in motion, and also analyzing the effect on vehicle dynamics requires measurement of vehicle behavior, amount of steering and other quantities noiselessly, as well as an explanation of the mutual influence with aerodynamic forces. Consequently, the related phenomena occurring in the real world are still not fully understood.