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This paper presents two newly developed technologies of optimizing impurity diffusion concentration for silicon semiconductor material and controlling internal stress of the top SiN (Silicon Nitride) layer on a membrane of a silicon substrate to apply them to the manufacturing process of MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) type air-flow sensor chips. Until today, in MEMS-type airflow sensors, poly-crystalline silicon (poly-Si) and platinum were widely used as a resistor material of key functional elements on a membrane of air-flow-rate measurement portion. The functional resistors on the membrane are required to monitor high temperatures of about 300 °C and to perform the self-heating operations at that temperature range because of the suppression of contaminant deposition by means of evaporation or incineration.

A wheel able to measure the generalized forces at the hub of a race motorcycle has been developed and used. The wheel has a very limited mass. It is made from magnesium with a special structure to sense the forces and provide the required level of stiffness. The wheel has been tested both indoor for preliminary approval and on the track. The three forces and the three moments acting at the hub can be measured with a resolution of 1N and 0.3Nm respectively. A specifically programmed DSP (Digital Signal Processor) embedded in the sensor allows real-time acquisition and processing of the six signals of forces/torques components. The signals are sent via Bluetooth to an onboard receiver connected to the vehicle CAN (Controller Area Network) bus. Each signal is sampled at 200Hz. The wheel can be used to derive the actual tyre characteristics or to record the loads acting at the hub.

Tire-road interaction is one of the main concerns in the design of control strategies for active/semi-active differentials oriented to improve handling performances of a vehicle. In particular, the knowledge of the friction coefficient at the tire-road interface is crucial for achieving the best performance in any working condition. State observers and estimators have been developed at the purpose, based on the measurements traditionally carried out on board vehicle (steer angle, lateral acceleration, yaw rate, wheels speed). However, until today, the problem of tire-road friction coefficient estimation (and especially of its maximum value) has not completely been solved. Thus, active control systems developed so far rely on a driver manual selection of the road adherence condition (anyway characterized by a rough and imprecise quality) or on a conservative tuning of the control logic in order to ensure vehicle safety among different tire-road friction coefficients.

Highway and roadway surface measurement is a practice that has been ongoing for decades now. This sort of measurement is intended to ensure a safe level of road perturbances. The measurement may be conducted by a slow moving apparatus directly measuring the elevation of the road, at varying distance intervals, to obtain a road profile, with varying degrees of resolution. An alternate means is to measure the surface roughness at highway speeds using accelerometers coupled with high speed distance measurements, such as laser sensors. Vehicles out rigged with such a system are termed inertial profilers. This type of inertial measurement provides a sort of filtered roadway profile. Much research has been conducted on the analysis of highway roughness, and the associated metrics involved. In many instances, it is desirable to maintain an off-road course such that the course will provide sufficient challenges to a vehicle during durability testing.

Increased interest in global warming requires rapid improvements in CO2 reduction efforts. The automotive industry is placing high importance on CO2 reduction technologies. Using Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery pack Stop & Start (S&S) system with combined energy regeneration is an effective technology to reduce CO2 emissions. Power supply storage is very important for the S&S system. High charging acceptance, low weight, and compact size are required. A Li-ion battery is the optimal power supply that meets these requirements. It has high charge acceptance per weight. Furthermore, we developed simple system structure which eliminates the need for the DC-DC converter. By utilizing a Li-ion battery that has voltage characteristics similar to the Pb battery there is no need for a converter to make adjustments between the two power supplies. The Li-ion battery's range of capacity must be managed appropriately as overcharge and overdischarge causes extensive damage to the battery.

This paper describes the newly developed processes of low temperature wafer bonding using plasma activation and deep dry silicon etching technologies. Both processes are a new type of “MEMS” (Micro Electro Mechanical System) process technology suitable for automotive pressure sensors. The conventional pressure sensor was a unified unit consisting of a silicon sensor chip and a glass stage. The diced unified unit was cut from a bonded disk of a processed silicon wafer and a glass stage substrate, and the silicon sensor chip incorporated four piezo-resistors, a diaphragm and bipolar-circuit. However, the pressure sensor had difficulty in accurately measuring pressure in the high temperature range because of the thermal strain caused by the thermal expansion coefficient difference between the silicon sensor chip and the glass stage.

Fast charging of batteries at cold conditions faces the challenge of promoting undesired cell degradation phenomena such as lithium plating. The occurrence of lithium plating is strongly related to local surface potentials and temperatures involving the scales of the electrode surface, the unit cell and the entire module or pack. A multi-scale, multi-domain model is presented, enhancing a Newman based unit cell model with consistent models for heat generation and lithium plating and integrating this 1D+1D approach into a thermal 3D model on module level. The basic equations are presented and three different plating models from literature are discussed. The thermal model is assessed in open-loop simulations and the different plating approaches are compared in charge/discharge simulations at different operating conditions. The full multi-scale, multi-domain model is applied as a virtual sensor for model-based control of fast charging at cold conditions.

This work elaborates the transferability of electrode diffusion coefficients gained from fitting procedures in frequency domain to an electrochemical battery model run in time domain. An electrochemical battery model of an NMC622 half-cell electrode is simulated with sinusoidal current excitations at different frequencies. The current and voltage signals are analyzed in frequency domain via Nyquist and Bode plots. The frequency domain analysis of time domain simulations is applied to assess the numerical convergence of the simulation and the sensitivity on particle diameter, electrode and electrolyte diffusion coefficients. The simulated frequency spectra are used to fit the electrode diffusion coefficient by means of different electrical equivalent circuit models and the electrochemical battery model itself. The fitted diffusion coefficients from the different electrical equivalent circuit models deviate by one order of magnitude from the a priori known reference data.

Aim of this study is to analyze the benefits of the measures provided by smart tyres on tyre-road friction coefficient and vehicle sideslip angle estimation. In particular, a smart tyre constituted by 2 tri-axial accelerometers glued on the tyre inner liner is considered which is able to provide the measures of the tyre-road contact forces once per wheel turn. These measures are added to the ones usually present onboard vehicle (steer angle, lateral acceleration and yaw rate) and following included into an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) based on a single-track vehicle model. Performance of the proposed observer is evaluated on a series of handling maneuvers and its robustness to road bank angle, tyre and vehicle parameters variation is discussed.

The paper deals with the “wise sensorization” of vehicle components. In the upcoming full digitalization of mobility, vehicle components are getting more and more sensorized. The problem is why, what, when and where vehicle components can be sensorized. The paper attempts a preliminary problem statement for the sensorization of vehicle components. A theoretical basic investigation is introduced, setting the main concepts on which extended sensorization is advisable or not. The paradigms of Industry 4.0 and Automotive 4.0 are addressed, namely sensors are proposed to be used both for monitoring the manufacturing process and for monitoring the service life of the component. In general, sensors are proposed to be used for multiple purposes. Two examples of sensorized components are briefly presented. One refers to a sensorized electric motor, the other one refers to a sensorized wheel.

Wheel and wheelhouses contribute up to 20-30% of the aerodynamic drag of passenger cars. Simulating the flow field around wheels is challenging due to the complexity of the flow structures generated by tires and rims, wheel rotation, tire deformation and contact with the ground. High accuracy is usually obtained with transient simulations that treat rim rotation with the Sliding Mesh (SM) approach, which is also computationally expensive. Previous studies have confirmed that the application of a tangential velocity component to the rim surface is unphysical for open rims, while a Moving Reference Frame (MRF) is lacking accuracy and the averaged results depend on the initial spokes position. These methods do not consider the dynamic nature of the problem. This work proposes the use of the Actuator Line (AL) and Rotor Disk (RD) approaches as alternatives for simulating open rims with much lower computational cost.

Calibrating a vehicle’s powertrain for dynamic operation needs to focus on efforts to mitigate the risks of thermal overload which may arise in the stator or rotor components of an e-motor. Risks also may arise for expected NVH or durability targets, with torque and torque “oscillations” acting as primary sources for the vehicles’ NVH behavior. Both topics, temperature measurement of stator and rotor as well as dynamic torque measurements of the powertrain’s drive shaft are addressed with examples demonstrating the sensors applications in normal test bed and vehicle configurations.

The parameterization of the electrochemical pseudo-two-dimensional (P2D) model plays an important role as it determines the acceptance and application range of subsequent simulation studies. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is commonly applied to characterize batteries and to obtain the exchange current density and the solid diffusion coefficient of a given electrode material. EIS measurements performed with frequencies ranging from 1 MHz down to 10 mHz typically do not cover clearly isolated solid state diffusion processes of lithium ions in positive or negative electrode materials. To extend the frequency range down to 10 μHz, the distribution function of relaxation times (DRT) is a promising analysis method. It can be applied to time-domain measurements where the battery is excited by a current pulse and relaxed for a certain period.