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Further improvements of internal combustion engines to reduce fuel consumption and to face future legislation constraints are strictly related to the study of mixture formation. The reason for that is the desire to supply the engine with homogeneous charge, towards the direction of a global stoichiometric blend in the combustion chamber. Fuel evaporation and thus mixture quality mostly depend on injector atomization features and charge motion within the cylinder. 3D-CFD simulations offer great potential to study not only injector atomization quality but also the evaporation behavior. Nevertheless coupling optical measurements and simulations for injector analysis is an open discussion because of the large number of influencing parameters and interactions affecting the fuel injection’s reproducibility. For this purpose, detailed numerical investigations are used to describe the injection phenomena.

The industry is working intensively on the precision of thermal management. By using complex thermal management strategies, it is possible to make engine heat distribution more accurate and dynamic, thereby increasing efficiency. Significant efforts are made to improve the cooling efficiency of the engine water jacket by using 3D CFD. As well, 1D simulation plays a significant role in the design and analysis of the cooling system, especially for considering transient behaviour of the engine. In this work, a practice-oriented universal method for creating a 1D water jacket model is presented. The focus is on the discretization strategy of 3D geometry and the calculation of heat transfer using Nusselt correlations. The basis and reference are 3D CFD simulations of the water jacket. Guidelines for the water jacket discretization are proposed. The heat transfer calculation in the 1D-templates is based on Nusselt-correlations (Nu = Nu(Re, Pr)), which are derived from 3D CFD simulations.

As part of a system model, a PEM fuel cell stack model is presented for functional tests and pre-calibration of control units on hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) test benches. From the basic idea to couple a 1-D membrane model with a spatially distributed abstraction of the gas channel, a real-time capable 1-D+1-D PEM FC stack model is constructed. Fundament for the HiL usage is an explicit formulation of the commonly implicit model equations. With that, not only calculation time can be reduced, but also model accuracy is preserved. A validation using test bench data emphasizes the accuracy of the model. Finally, a runtime and eigenvalue analysis of the stack model proves the real-time capability.

A simulation approach to predict the amount of snow which is penetrating into the air filter of the vehicle’s engine is important for the automotive industry. The objective of our work was to predict the snow ingress based on an Eulerian/Lagrangian approach within a commercial CFD-software and to compare the simulation results to measurements in order to confirm our simulation approach. An additional objective was to use the simulation approach to improve the air intake system of an automobile. The measurements were performed on two test sites. On the one hand we made measurements on a natural test area in Sweden to reproduce real driving scenarios and thereby confirm our simulation approach. On the other hand the simulation results of the improved air intake system were compared to measurements, which were carried out in a climatic wind tunnel in Stuttgart.

As a consequence of reduced fuel consumption, direct injection gasoline engines have already prevailed against port fuel injection. However, in-cylinder fuel homogenization strongly depends on charge motion and injection strategies and can be challenging due to the reduced available time for mixture formation. An insufficient homogenization has generally a negative impact on the combustion and therefore also on efficiency and emissions. In order to reach the targets of the intensified CO2 emission reduction, further increase in efficiency of SI engines is essential. In this connection, 0D/1D simulation is a fundamental tool due to its application area in an early stage of development and its relatively low computational costs. Certainly, inhomogeneities are still not considered in quasi dimensional combustion models because the prediction of mixture formation is not included in the state of the art 0D/1D simulation.

Thixoforming is another word for Semi-Solid-Metalforming (SSM) which means that metal will be formed between solid and liquid temperature. In this state the material behavior is thixotropic. Aluminum alloys can be formed in this thixotropic state when 30 to 40% of the material is liquid. In this case it is possible to form the aluminum in a process that is located between the die-casting and the forging technology. The thixoforming process allows it to produce Near Net Shape aluminum-parts with high quality for the automotive industry. This paper is intended to give the reader some examples about and some insights into the possible applications of the thixoforming process.

Cars cause a lot of pollutants during the utilization phase. Within the last years environmental legislation tried to reduce the emissions by the introduction of very tight laws. The results are impressive: Most of the car exhaust emissions like carbonmonoxid and nitrous oxides have been reduced. At this stage new emission reduction limits in Europe as well as in the United States can only be achieved if the formulation of the catalyst system is significantly changed. An increased use of precious metals and rare earth materials is the result of such a modification which succeeds in a more expensive design of the total catalyst systems. More expensive means not only cost aspects but also the environmental burdens related to the increased production of precious metals and other catalyst components. The Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) of the catalyst system which achieves the new legislation is demonstrated as well as the effects to the usage phase.

In this paper, a simulation approach is introduced which takes into account all relevant heat sources and sinks in the combustion engine and in the engine compartment. With this approach, it is possible to calculate the appearing power flow and enthalpy flow as well as the component temperatures. Therefore, the complex thermodynamic and friction processes in the engine are described as simple as possible; the complete system can still be described reliably within certain limits, and the effects of different thermal optimization measures can be shown. It is an essential point for the modeling that only two integral quantities are necessary (the high pressure efficiency and the high pressure wall heat loss) for the complete combustion model.

For integrating Life Cycle Assessment into the design process it is more and more necessary to generate models of single life cycle steps respectively manufacturing processes. For that reason it is indispensable to develop parametric processes. With such disposed processes the aim could only be to provide a tool where parametric environmental process models are available for a designer. With such a tool and the included models a designer will have the possibility to make an estimation of the probable energy consumption and needed additive materials for the applied manufacturing technology. Likewise if he has from the technical point of view the opportunity, he can shift the applied joining technology in the design phase by changing for instance the design.

One of the most important means used for suppressing squeal noise in disc brakes is the application of shims on the pad backplates. In many cases this proves a very efficient tool depending on the type of shim applied in the specific cases. Building up knowledge on the effects of shims have been ongoing for several years, and measuring the important parameters characterizing the shims is crucial for understanding how to develop and implement the shims in an optimal way. Several methods are described in literature for measuring the constrained layer damping effect and one method is described for direct measurement of the shear stiffness and shear damping properties. However, up to now no method has been available that can measure and characterize the normal stiffness and damping properties of shims. This is one of the most important properties of shims as it controls the de-coupling effect in the direction of the normal forces.

Automotive electric and electronic devices are commonly tested with standard pulses at the battery lines according to ISO 7637-Part 1 and 2. As these pulses do not cover all disturbances that occur in modern passenger cars, each OEM defines its own additional test-pulses which makes it difficult for component suppliers to satisfy all existing requirements. The paper shows a comparison between measurement and simulation such as slow “ignition on” pulses of a modern passenger car. Additionally, the ability of the computing model to calculate the propagation of fast transients and characteristic pulses of currently used electric and electronic devices is demonstrated. This data can be used for the definition of new test-pulses.

Today, mechanical systems such as the piston groups of internal combustion engines are simulated using Multiple Body-System (MBS) - approaches. However, the use of these models is restricted to a few problems as their adaptability is limited. The simulation of mechanical systems only by means of finite elements shows great promise for the future. In order to consider lubrication effects between two touching bodies of a mechanical system, a hydrodynamic contact algorithm (HCA) for finite element (FE) applications was developed. This paper discusses the technical background and first results for the simulation of a piston group using this new approach.

Improvement of heat-transfer calculation for SI-engines in the three-dimensional simulation has been achieved and widely been tested by using a phenomenological heat-transfer model. The model is based on the local application of an improved Re-Nu-correlation (dimensional analysis) proposed by Bargende [1]. This approach takes advantage of long experience in engine heat transfer modeling in the real working process analysis. The results of numerous simulations of different engine meshes show that the proposed heat-transfer model enables to calculate the overall as well as the local heat transfer in good agreement with both real working process analyses and experimental investigations. The influence of the mesh structure has also been remarkably reduced and compared to the standard wall function approach, no additional CPU-time is required.

The strong demand for advanced lightweight structures in the automotive industry has increased activities in the development of new structural materials with low densities and tailored properties. Weight savings in the wheel suspension by the use of lightweight materials provide the additional benefit of an improvement in comfort behavior and driveability. The replacement of iron based materials with ceramics offers the possibility for a significant mass reduction. In the case of high tribological, environmental and thermal loads, ceramics provide the additional advantages of excellent wear, corrosion and temperature resistance with tailored properties for application as brake disk material. Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramics are promising structural materials in various high temperature and tribological applications.

The EU SPARC Project (Secure Propelled Vehicle with Advanced Redundant Control) has developed a new system architecture that enables effective application of driver assisted systems in an X-by-wire powertrain. A major challenge in the conception of such a system is development of a reliable electrical energy supply. A simulation is the most important tool for enabling the fundamental aspects to work, as for example, a dimensioning of the powernet. This article explains our approach in this SPARC simulation. We provide suggestions through examples of how to find simulation solutions for powernet dimensioning, as well as for the conception and validation of energy management strategies.

2-dimensional time resolved (200 frames/s) flow field measurements have been made in a transparent SI square piston engine using a movie version of particle image velocimetry (PIV). To this end the beam of a copper vapor laser was formed into a light sheet and was double pulsed with a pulse separation of 50 μs at a repetition rate of 200 Hz. A rotating drum camera was used to record the Mie-scattered signals from seeding particles. The circumferential velocity of the drum of the camera causes an image shifting of the two exposures taken with a double pulse. By proper adaption of drum and engine speed, a series of up to 70 double pulsed images per individual engine cycle may be recorded on film. This film data may be evaluated uniquely with respect to both magnitude and direction of individual flow vectors in the flow field.

A numerical simulation program for the design of the cooling air duct and the cooling system of vehicles for stationary operating conditions is introduced. This program allows the simulation of interactions with the system environment resp. an air conditioning. Hot recirculations of air in the front part of the car and the inhomogenious flow through the heat exchangers radiator and condensor in their affects on the heat transfer capacity are simulated. The power demand of the fan, the water pump and the compressor is taken into account for calculating the heat flow from the engine into the cooling water.

According to the present state of knowledge, the use of “Tailored Blanks” with different sheet thicknesses and/or grades represents an interesting manufacturing alternative in the design and development of sheet metal parts in the automotive industry. In order to assess the forming behavior, fundamental research was conducted on laser and mash seam welded blanks. Based on this experimental findings, a segmented draw die was designed and built to determine the limits of the metal forming process by deep drawing of car body parts. The results with this draw die showed that a uniform blankholder pressure must be guaranteed during the forming process in the flange region of the part. This necessitated definite slots in the region of the weld line for the mash seam welded blanks. Furthermore, a die concept was presented to enable an equalization of both sheet thickness steps and sheet thickness fluctuations, without requiring replacement of the respective draw die components.

During sheet metal forming processes, the friction conditions have a decisive influence on forming limits, the robustness of the production process and the quality of the parts produced, with significant forces required to overcome friction between the sheet and the tools. If lot-to-lot reproducibility is to be guaranteed, an appropriate method of characterizing the sheet surface topography is needed to monitor the sheet metal fabrication process. Newly developed optical measurement techniques and computer workstation technology are presented which enable the topography of sheet surfaces to be described in three dimensions.

The noise emission of cruising vehicles essentially consists of tire/road noise, drivetrain noise (engine with intake and exhaust system, transmission and driving axle) and aerodynamic noise due to the flow around bodywork, chassis, wheels and cooling air flow (fan). Engines and drivetrains have become quieter due to many man-years of engineering attention and tire noise has also been reduced - at least the noise reaching the passenger compartment. Consequently, the aerodynamic noise of ground vehicles has become dominant at driving speeds above 100 kph both in interior and exterior noise. In order to determine the contribution of aerodynamic noise to the overall noise, measurements are carried out more and more in specially equipped automotive wind tunnels.