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Researches for automation of hydraulic excavators have been conducted for laborsaving, improved efficiency of operations and increased worker's safety improvement. Authors' final goal is to develop automatic digging system which can realize the high efficiency. Therefore, it is thought that appropriate digging control algorithm is important for the automation. For this goal, this paper shows a dynamics model of the backhoe excavator and simulations using such models. Detailed dynamic models are needed from the point of view of the control engineering. Authors evaluate effectiveness of automatic digging algorithm by simulation models. In this research, the linkage mechanism which contains the closed loops is modeled based on the Newton-Euler formulation, where motion equation is derived. Moreover, we apply a soil model for simulation, based on the two dimensional distinct element method (DEM), in order to reproduce reaction force from grounds.

To avoid a trial and error adjustment for designing EMI filters, clarifying load impedance of operating condition, i.e., dynamic impedance of equipment is very useful. Therefore the need to a non-contact measurement method of the impedance connected to a wire harness is increasing rapidly. A measurement method using a network analyzer with two current probes was previously proposed. However, it was confirmed only up to 30 MHz. Many radio equipment operate above 30 MHz such as FM receivers and GPS receivers installed in vehicles. So increasing the measurement frequency is necessary in the auto industry. At first, we tried to expand the applicable frequency to 100 MHz, i.e., FM band. In this study, we applied the transmission line theory using the non-contact measurement method. Furthermore, in order to use the theory, the characteristic impedance and phase constant of the wire harness are required. So we made an additional measurement to estimate them.

Compact, high efficiency and high reliability are required for an xEV motor generator. IPM rotors with neodymium magnets are widely applied for xEV motors to achieve these requirements. However, neodymium magnet material has a big impact on motor cost and there is supply chain risk due to increased usage of these rare earth materials for future automotive xEV’s. On the other hand, a wound-field rotor does not need magnets and can achieve equivalent performance to an IPM rotor. However, brushes are required in order to supply current to the winding coil of the rotor. This may cause insulation issues on xEV motors which utilize high voltage and high currents. Therefore, it is suggested to develop a system which supplies electric energy to the rotor field winding coil from the stator without brushes by applying a transformer between stator coil and rotor field winding. Specifically, add auxiliary magnetic poles between each field winding pole and wind sub-coils to these poles.

Modern vehicles utilize various functionalities that require security solutions such as secure in-vehicle communication and ECU authentication. Cryptographic keys are the basis for such security solutions. We propose two approaches for secure and efficient invehicle key management. In both approaches, an ECU acting as a Key Master in the vehicle is required. The first approach is based on SHE. The Key Master generates and distributes new keys to all ECU based on the SHE key update protocol. The second approach performs key establishment based on key derivation. The Key Master sends a trigger in form of a counter and all ECUs derive new keys based on the received counter value and pre-shared keys. It is thus possible to handle in-vehicle key management without the need for an OEM backend to manage all keys. This reduces cost and complexity of the solution.

Auto-ignition and combustion processes of dual-component fuel spray were numerically studied. A source code of SUPERTRAPP (developed by NIST), which is capable of predicting thermodynamic and transportation properties of pure fluids and fluid mixtures containing up to 20 components, was incorporated into KIVA3V to provide physical fuel properties and vapor-liquid equilibrium calculations. Low temperature oxidation reaction, which is of importance in ignition process of hydrocarbon fuels, as well as negative temperature coefficient behavior was taken into account using the multistep kinetics ignition prediction based on Shell model, while a global single-step mechanism was employed to account for high temperature oxidation reaction. Computational results with the present multi-component fuel model were validated by comparing with experimental data of spray combustion obtained in a constant volume vessel.

Instrument clusters that display all information on a TFT-LCD screen, also known as reconfigurable instrument clusters, have become the new trend in automotive interiors. DENSO mass-produced the world's first reconfigurable instrument cluster in 2008. To satisfy customer requirements, large quantities of resources were required. Coupled with an iterative process due to requirement changes, development costs became very high. Reducing development costs was vital in order to expand the reconfigurable instrument cluster products line. One solution was to use existing human machine interface (HMI) tools. However, most HMI tools are geared toward software developers and not graphic artists. Furthermore, each tool has its own unique method for image and scene creation, creating an ineffective and sometimes difficult environment for artists familiar with industry-leading computer graphics (CG) software to learn and use the tools.

The causes of deaths in traffic accidents are predominantly human factors such as careless or "heedlessness" driving; recently, accidents that are believed to be due to deteriorated physical conditions, such as heart attacks, have been reported. Non-contact electrocardiography (ECG) monitor for continuous ECG detection while driving is needed to reduce a number of fatal accident by human error like this. Recently there are a lot of papers to detect cardiac electricity using capacitance coupling between human body and electrode. This sensor system must be adopted appropriate high input impedance circuit and noise reduction technique as a function of source impedance value especially for a seat mounted sensor.

Humidity sensors used in automatic windshield defogging controls contribute to the improvement of fuel consumption. The optimum control of air conditioning systems can be realized by adding humidity information to conventional systems which have used only temperature information. While resistive humidity sensors have been widely used, their sensing range and responsiveness are observed as issues. Resistive sensors cannot function at a humidity range of around 100% RH as well as at a low temperature range, and have a low response rate to sudden changes in humidity. It is considered that resistive humidity sensors will be replaced with capacitive ones which have a wide sensing range and high responsiveness.

In a high-speed DI diesel engine, fuel sprays impinge surely on a wall of a piston cavity. Then the phenomenon of the heat transfer between the impinged spray and the wall appears and it has the strong effect on the combustion processes of the engine. The purpose of this study are to clarify basically the heat transfer characteristics. In the experiments, the fuel was injected into the quiescent inert atmosphere with a high temperature under high pressure field, and an evaporative single diesel spray was impinging upon a flat wall. And, the temperature distribution on the wall surface in a radial direction was detected by the Loex-Constantan thin film thermo-couples. Thus, the heat flux between the impinged spray and the wall surface was calculated from the temperature profile within the wall by Fourier's equation using the finite difference method, under the assumption of the one-dimensional heat conduction.

Some papers on the combustion in a diesel engine have been already presented to discuss the effect of the additive called ADOIL TAC. A bottom view DI diesel engine driven at 980rpm with no load was used in the experiment presented here, in order to make clear this effect. JIS second class light diesel fuel oil was injected through a hole nozzle at the normal test run. The additive was intermixed 0.01 vol. % in this fuel oil, in the experiments to compare with the normal combustion. The flame was taken by direct high-speed photography. Profiles of flame temperature and KL were detected on the film by image processing, applying the two-color method. Soot was visualized by high-speed laser shadowgraphy, and the heat release rate was calculated using the cylinder pressure diagram. Discussion on the effect of the additive on the combustion phenomena was made by using all the data.

Fuel design concept has been proposed for low emission and combustion control in engine systems. In this concept, the multicomponent fuels, which are mixed with a high volatility fuel (gasoline or gaseous fuel components) and a low volatility fuel (gas oil or fuel oil components), are used for artificial control of fuel properties. In addition, these multicomponent fuels can easily lead to flash boiling which promote atomization and vaporization in the spray process. In order to understand atomization and vaporization process of multicomponent fuels in detail, the model for flash boiling spray of multicomponent fuel have been constructed and implemented into KIVA3V rel.2. This model considers the detailed physical properties and evaporation process of multicomponent fuel and the bubble nucleation, growth and disruption in a nozzle orifice and injected fuel droplets.

Ignition, combustion and emissions characteristics of dual-component fuel spray were examined for ranges of injection timing and intake-air oxygen concentration. Fuels used were binary mixtures of gasoline-like component i-octane (cetane number 12, boiling point 372 K) and diesel fuel-like component n-tridecane (cetane number 88, boiling point 510 K). Mass fraction of i-octane was also changed as the experimental variable. The experimental study was carried out in a single cylinder compression ignition engine equipped with a common-rail injection system and an exhaust gas recirculation system. The results demonstrated that the increase of the i-octane mass fraction with optimizations of injection timing and intake oxygen concentration reduced pressure rise rate and soot and NOx emissions without deterioration of indicated thermal efficiency.

The particulate matters (PM) containing in the exhaust gas through a CI engine affects strongly the human health. Thus, it is very significant to measure the mechanism of PM itself generation for actualization of a clean CI engine. On the standpoint mentioned above, the authors carried out the experiments of the characteristics of PM generated from a small high speed DI CI engine with a single cylinder. The variables were the equivalence ratio, the injection timing, the EGR rate and the sort of fuel. As a result, the effect of experimental condition on the distribution of PM is clear through experiments.

The surroundings around the diesel spray are entrained during the growth of the spray. The mixing process between the evaporated fuel oil and the entrained surroundings, that is, the entrainment, has a significant meaning for the combustion diesel engine. It is difficult to detect the movement of the entrainment because the diesel spray is the gas-liquid two-phase flow and the unsteady phenomenon within a few milliseconds. Then, in order to clarify and to generalize the movement of entrainment, following three experiments were done. 1)Two-dimensional steady water spray -flat spray- injected into the ambient atmosphere, using tuft and hot wire method. 2) Unsteady water jet injected into water, using tracer. 3)single diesel spray injected into the atmosphere with high pressure at room temperature, using smoke wire.

Three-dimensional large eddy simulation (LES) has been conducted for a diesel spray flame using KIVALES which is LES version of KIVA code. Modified TAB model, velocity interpolation model and rigid sphere model are used to improve the prediction of the fuel-mixture process in the diesel spray. Combustion is simulated using the Eddy-Dissipation model. CIP method was incorporated into the KIVALES in order to suppress the numerical instability on the combustible flow. The formation of soot and NO was simulated using Hiroyasu model and KIVA original model. Three different grid resolutions were used to examine the grid dependency. The result shows that the LES approach with 0.5 mm grid size is able to resolve the instantaneous spray with the intermittency in the spray periphery, the axi-symmetric shape and meandering flow after the end of injection as shown in the experimental results.

It is thought that the synthetic gas, including hydrogen and carbon monoxide, has a potential to be an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines, because a heating value of the synthetic gas is higher than one of hydrogen or natural gas. A purpose of this study is to acquire stable auto-ignition and combustion of the synthetic gas which is supposed to be applied into a direct-injection compression ignition engine. In this study, the effects of ambient gas temperatures and oxygen concentrations on auto-ignition characteristics of the synthetic gas with changing percentage of hydrogen (H2) or carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in the synthetic gas. An electronically-controlled, hydraulically-actuated gas injector was used to control a precise injection timing and period of gaseous fuels, and the experiments were conducted in an optically accessible, constant-volume combustion chamber under simulated quiescent diesel engine conditions.

An ignition simulation and an ignition visualization method that analyze effects of spark plug electrode design have been developed. In the ignition simulation, a programmed heat source corresponds to the discharge energy in the spark gap, and the flame-kernel generation and flame propagation are calculated on the heat balance in the gap, in consideration of thermal transmission to the electrodes. The results by this simulation indicate that high ignitability of fine ground electrode spark plugs is because the miniaturization of the ground electrode reduces the heat loss, and flame growth is thus less disturbed by the loss. The ignition visualization includes taking Schlieren images by laser light to capture flame kernels with weaker luminescence intensity compared to ignition discharge spark luminescence. This visualization enables the observation of the influence of the shape of spark plug electrodes on flame growth.

The objective of this study is to explore the relation among mixture distribution condition, chemical character of fuel, combustion processes, and emissions characteristics with premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) operation. The present experiment employs two fuel injectors which are capable of port injection and direct one. The former was used to supply a highly-homogeneous mixture and the latter with late injection timing was employed to control the mixture heterogeneity. Thus, these sets of injection equipments are capable of setting a wide variety of mixture heterogeneity. Furthermore, two primary reference fuels were used in order to know the influences of chemical character. The experiments were conducted in order to clarify the combustion and emissions characteristics through engine tests. Optical diagnostic was also performed to gain additional insight into the combustion processes for a wide variety of mixture distribution.

It is very much necessary for researchers and engineers whose work is the field of combustion in a CI engine to find the information of droplets in a diesel spray. The information is strongly required to construct the model of spray built in the numerical code for its simulation and to be used for the verification of the accuracy of the calculation. This paper describes the photographing system with high spatial resolution, the distribution of droplet size and the vortex scale caused by the droplets motion by means of this system.

This paper describes the results of on-board measurement of engine performance and emissions in diesel vehicle operated with bio-diesel fuels. Here, two waste-cooking oils were investigated. One fuel is a waste-cooking oil methyl esters. This fuel is actually applied to a garbage collection vehicle with DI diesel engine (B100) and the city bus (B20; 80% gas oil is mixed into B100 in volume) as an alternative fuel of gas oil in Kyoto City. Another one is a fuel with ozone treatment by removing impurities from raw waste-cooking oils. Here, in order to improve the fuel properties, kerosene is mixed 70% volume in this fuel. This mixed fuel (i-BDF) is applied into several tracks and buses in Wakayama City. Then, these 3 bio-diesel fuels were applied to the on-board experiments and the results were compared with gas oil operation case.