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Compression molded SMC composed of chopped carbon fiber and resin polymer which balances the mechanical performance and manufacturing cost presents a promising solution for vehicle lightweight strategy. However, the performance of the SMC molded parts highly depends on the compression molding process and local microstructure, which greatly increases the cost for the part level performance testing and elongates the design cycle. ICME (Integrated Computational Material Engineering) approaches are thus necessary tools to reduce the number of experiments required during part design and speed up the deployment of the SMC materials. As the fundamental stage of the ICME workflow, commercial software packages for SMC compression molding exist yet remain not fully validated especially for chopped fiber systems. In the present study, SMC plaques are prepared through compression molding process.

Chopped carbon fiber sheet molding compound (SMC) material is a promising material for mass-production lightweight vehicle components. However, the experimental characterization of SMC material property is a challenging task and needs to be further investigated. There now exist two ASTM standards (ASTM D7078/D7078M and ASTM D5379/D5379M) for characterizing the shear properties of composite materials. However, it is still not clear which standard is more suitable for SMC material characterization. In this work, a comparative study is conducted by performing two independent Digital Image Correlation (DIC) shear tests following the two standards, respectively. The results show that ASTM D5379/D5379M is not appropriate for testing SMC materials. Moreover, the failure mode of these samples indicates that the failure is caused by the additional moment raised by the improper design of the fixture.

The dynamic trajectory planning problem for automatic vehicles in complex traffic scenarios is investigated in this paper. A hierarchical motion planning framework is developed to complete the complex planning task. An improved dangerous potential field in the curvilinear coordinate system is constructed to describe the collision risk of automatic vehicles accurately instead of the discrete Gaussian convolution algorithm. At the same time, the driving comfort is also considered in order to generate an optimal, smooth, collision-free and feasible path in dynamics. The optimal path can be mapped into the Cartesian coordinate system simply and conveniently. Furthermore, a velocity profile considering practical vehicle dynamics is also presented to improve the safety and the comfort in driving. The effectiveness of the proposed dynamic trajectory planning is verified by numerical simulation for several typical traffic scenarios.

As pedestrian protection tests and evaluations have been officially incorporated into new C-NCAP, more stringent requirements have been placed on pedestrian protection performance. In this study, in order to reduce the injury of the vehicle front end structure to the pedestrian's lower extremity during the collision, the advanced pedestrian legform impactor (aPLI) model was used in conjunction with the finite element vehicle model for collision simulation based on the new C-NCAP legform test evaluation regulation. This paper selected the key components which have significant influences on the pedestrian's leg protection performance based on the CAE vehicle model, including front bumper, front-cover plate, upper impact pillar, impact beam and lower support plate, to form a simplified model and conducted parametric modeling based on it.

Accident statistics have shown that older and obese occupants are less adaptable to existing vehicle occupant restraint systems than ordinary middle-aged male occupants, and tend to have higher injury risk in vehicle crashes. However, the current research on injury mechanism of aging and obese occupants in vehicle frontal impacts is scarce. This paper focuses on the optimization design method of occupant restraint system parameters for specific body type characteristics. Three parameters, namely the force limit value of the force limiter in the seat belt, pretensioner preload of the seat belt and the proportionality coefficient of mass flow rate of the inflator were used for optimization. The objective was to minimize the injury risk probability subjected to constraints of occupant injury indicator values for various body regions as specified in US-NCAP frontal impact tests requirements.

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 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.

Driving safety is an eternal theme of the transportation industry. In recent years, with the rapid growth of car ownership, traffic accidents have become more frequent, and the harm it brings to human society has become increasingly serious. In this context, car safety assisted driving technology has received widespread attention. As an effective means to reduce traffic accidents and reduce accident losses, it has become the research frontier in the field of traffic engineering and represents the trend of future vehicle development. However, there are still many technical problems that need to be solved. With the continuous development of computer vision technology, face detection technology has become more and more mature, and applications have become more and more extensive. This article will use the face detection technology to detect the driver's face, and then analyze the changes in driver's driving focus.

In order to improve the tractive ability, steering capability and directional stability, etc. of automated mechanical transmission (AMT) vehicles running on the wet and slippery road, the anti-slip regulation (ASR) technologies for AMT vehicles are developed. The significance of ASR for AMT vehicles is introduced; a road friction recognition method based on the deceleration of driving wheels is investigated; a fuzzy anti-slip control system based on adjustment of engine torque is developed and the corresponding experimental verification is conducted. The experimental results denote that the proposed method is effective to eliminate the excessive slip when the AMT vehicle travels on the low friction road.

In this paper the hardware and software of a real-time dynamic test bench for simulating the total road forces of vehicles fitted with Automated Manual Transmissions (AMT) is described. First, the purpose and meaning of this research are discussed. And then, we select the hardware components of the test bench system according to the application requirements and complete the system design. Statement of the structure, working principle and function of the system is also included in this part. According to the experimental procedure of simulating total road load forces of vehicle under real-time conditions on the dynamic test bench, the software system is designed using Visual C++ 6.0, CAN bus communication protocol, RS-232, and network technology. Finally, some experimental tests for the system are carried out with the results that this design corresponds to the real-time dynamic requirements.

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.

The paper presents the design and analysis of pure electric bus powered by Lithium-ion battery and ultra capacitor. For the limited power energy of battery, the ultra capacitor pack is chosen as the auxiliary on-board energy storage device. The system configuration, system modeling and on-road test result analysis will be covered in the paper and the possibility of using ultra capacitors on electric bus to improve the economical efficiency in urban areas will be discussed.

Electric Power-Assisted Steering (EPAS) is a new power steering technology that will define the future of vehicle steering. The assist of EPAS is the function of the steering wheel torque and vehicle velocity. The assist characteristic of EPAS is set by control software, which is one of the key issues of EPAS. The straight-line type assist characteristic has been used in some current EPAS products, but its influence on the steering maneuverability and road feel hasn't been explicitly studied in theory. In this paper, the straight-line type assist characteristic is analyzed theoretically. Then a whole vehicle dynamic model used to study the straight-line type assist characteristic is built with ADAMS/Car and validated with DCF (Driver Control Files) mode of ADAMS/Car. Based on the whole vehicle dynamic model, the straight-line type assist characteristic's influence on the steering maneuverability and road feel is investigated.

To advance vehicle lightweighting, chopped carbon fiber sheet molding compound (SMC) is identified as a promising material to replace metals. However, there are no effective tools and methods to predict the mechanical property of the chopped carbon fiber SMC due to the high complexity in microstructure features and the anisotropic properties. In this paper, a Representative Volume Element (RVE) approach is used to model the SMC microstructure. Two modeling methods, the Voronoi diagram-based method and the chip packing method, are developed to populate the RVE. The elastic moduli of the RVE are calculated and the two methods are compared with experimental tensile test conduct using Digital Image Correlation (DIC). Furthermore, the advantages and shortcomings of these two methods are discussed in terms of the required input information and the convenience of use in the integrated processing-microstructure-property analysis.

This paper describes a uniform Hardware-In-the-Loop (HiL) test rig for the different types of Electronic Braking System (EBS). It is applied to both modular testing and integrated testing. This test rig includes a vehicle dynamic model, a real-time simulation platform, an actual brake circuit and the EBS system under test. Firstly, the vehicle dynamic model is a highly parameterized commercial vehicle model. So it can simulate different types of commercial vehicle by different parameter configurations. Secondly, multi-types of brake circuit are modeled using brake components simulation library. So, it can test the EBS control unit independently without the influence of any real electro-pneumatic components. And a software EBS controller is also modeled. So it can test the algorithm of EBS offline. Thirdly, all real electro-pneumatic components without real gas inputted are connected to the real-time test platform through independent program-controlled relay-switches.

ADAS must be tested thoroughly before they can be deployed for series production. Comparing with road and field test, bench test has been widely used owing to its advantages of less labor costs, more controllable scenarios, etc. However, there is no satisfied systematic approach to generate high-efficiency and full-coverage test scenarios automatically because of its integration of human, vehicle and traffic. Most of the test scenarios generated by the existing methods are either too simple or too few to be able to achieve full coverage of requirements. Besides, the cost is high when the ET method is used. To solve the aforementioned problems, an automatic test scenario generation method based on complexity for bench test is presented in this paper. Firstly, considering the fact that the device is easier to malfunction under complex cases, an index measuring the complexity of test case is proposed by using the method of AHP.

In this paper, a novel driver model is proposed to track vehicle speed in MIL (Model-in-the-Loop) test system, which has structural consistency with HIL (Hardware-in-the-Loop) test system. First, the MIL test system which contains models of driver, vehicle and test bench is established. Second, according to the connections of the established models in Matlab/Simulink environment, the vehicle speed is calculated in vehicle model. Emphatically, through the deviation between driving cycle speed and calculated vehicle speed, PI controller in driver model adjusts the vehicle speed to ideal point through sending the torque command to drive motor, the ILC (Iterative Learning Control) controller modifies and stores P value of PI controller. Then, in order to obtain the better modification of PI controller, iterative learning control algorithm is deeply researched in term of types and parameters.

This paper proposes a low-cost but indirect method for occupancy detection and occupant counting purpose in current and future automotive systems. It can serve as either a way to determine the number of occupants riding inside a car or a way to complement the other devices in determining the occupancy. The proposed method is useful for various mobility applications including car rental, fleet management, taxi, car sharing, occupancy in autonomous vehicles, etc. It utilizes existing on-board motion sensor measurements, such as those used in the vehicle stability control function, together with door open and closed status. The vehicle’s motion signature in response to an occupant’s boarding and alighting is first extracted from the motion sensors that measure the responses of the vehicle body. Then the weights of the occupants are estimated by fitting the vehicle responses with a transient vehicle dynamics model.

The study of controllable suspension properties special in the characteristics of improving ride comfort and road handling is a challenging task for vehicle industry. Currently, since most suspension control requires the observation of unmeasurable state, how to accurately acquire the state of a suspension system attracts more attention. To solve this problem, a novel approach interacting multiple mode Kalman Filter (IMMKF) is proposed in this paper. Suspension system parameters are crucial for the performance of state observers. Uncertain suspension system parameters in various conditions, e.g. due to additional load, have significant effect on state estimation. Simultaneously, state transition among different models may be happened on the condition of varying system parameters.