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Discussions about the optimal technology of propulsion systems for future ground vehicles have been raising over the last few years. Several options include different types of technologies. However, those who are advocating conventional internal combustion engines are faced with the fact that fossil fuels are limited. Others favor hydrogen fuel as the solution for the future, either in combination with combustion engines or as an energy carrier for fuel cells. In any case, the production and storage of hydrogen is an ongoing challenge of numerous research works. Finally, there are battery-electric or hybrid propulsion systems in use, gaining more and more popularity worldwide. Ongoing advances in power electronics help to improve control systems within automotive applications. New developed or designed components enable more efficient system architectures and control.

Automotive embedded systems have become very complex, are strongly integrated, and the safety-criticality and real-time constraints of these systems raise new challenges. The OSEK/VDX standard provides an open-ended architecture for distributed real-time capable units in vehicles. This is supported by the OSEK Implementation Language (OIL), a language aiming at specifying the configuration of these real-time operating systems. The challenge, however, is to ensure consistency of the concept constraints and configurations along the entire product development. The contribution of this paper is to bridge the existing gap between model-driven systems engineering and software engineering for automotive real-time operating systems (RTOS). For this purpose a bidirectional tool bridge has been established based on OSEK OIL exchange format files.

This paper describes the development of a 0-D-sulfur poisoning model for a NOx storage catalyst (NSC). The model was developed and calibrated using findings and data obtained from a passenger car diesel engine used on testbed. Based on an empirical approach, the developed model is able to predict not only the lower sulfur adsorption with increasing temperature and therefore the higher SOx (SO2 and SO3) slip after NSC, but also the sulfur saturation with increasing sulfur loading, resulting in a decrease of the sulfur adsorption rate with ongoing sulfation. Furthermore, the 0-D sulfur poisoning model was integrated into an existing 1-D NOx storage catalyst kinetic model. The combination of the two models results in an “EAS Model” (exhaust aftertreatment system) able to predict the deterioration of NOx-storage in a NSC with increasing sulfation level, exhibiting higher NOx-emissions after the NSC once it is poisoned.

Due to current progresses in the field of driver assistance systems and the continuously growing electrification of vehicle drive trains, the evaluation of driver behavior has become an important part in the development process of modern cars. Findings from driver analyses are used for the creation of individual profiles, which can be permanently adapted due to ongoing data processing. A benefit of data-based dynamic control systems lies in the possibility to individually configure the vehicle behavior for a specific driver, which can contribute to increasing customer acceptance and satisfaction. In this way, an optimization of the control behavior between driver and vehicle and the resulting mutual system learning and -adjustment hold great potential for improvements in driving behavior, safety and energy consumption.

Hydrogen nowadays is considered one promising energy carrier for future mobility scenarios. Its application as a fuel in ICEs greatly benefits from Direct Injection (DI) strategies, which help to reduce the disadvantages of PFI systems such as air displacement effects, knocking, backfiring and low power density. In SI-engines one appropriate way to increase efficiency is the reduction of wall heat losses by jet- and/or wall-guided mixture formation systems. In theory, Compression Ignition (CI) systems employing a diffusion type of combustion allow for a significant raise in compression ratio and, thus, are likely to excel the SI concept in terms of efficiency. The following paper deals with results obtained from investigations on H2 Compression-Ignition (H2-CI) combustion systems by employing both thermodynamic research engines and 3D CFD simulation.

When vehicle to vehicle collisions are analyzed using a discrete kinetic time forward simulation, several simulation runs have to be performed, to find a solution, where post impact trajectories and rest positions correspond with the real accident. This paper describes in detail a method to vary the pre-impact parameters automatically and to evaluate the simulation results. In a first step the different pre-impact parameters are discussed. Their influence on the impact and the post impact movement is shown. Furthermore the necessary specifications to define the post crash movement are presented. The necessity to define tire marks and rest positions of the vehicles involved is outlined. An effective evaluation criteria is derived, which is used to calculate a simulation error. This error is then used as a target function to control the optimization process. Two different optimization strategies are presented.

Research and development engineers have paid much attention to coupling commercial tools for examining complex systems, recently. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an automated coupling of a CFD program with a commercial thermal radiation tool. Based on a previous work the coupling behaviour of a parallelized CFD code is being demonstrated. The automation thus speeds up the calculation procedure even for transient simulations not relying on codes of just one vendor. The simulation is then compared with measurements of temperatures of an actual SUV and conclusions are drawn.

In order to fulfill future regulations regarding emissions and CO2 reduction, the small engine market inclines to migrate from carburetor systems to cleaner, more efficient electronic ignition controls and electronic fuel injection systems. When implementing such mechatronic systems in small engine applications, one has to consider specific boundary conditions like the lack of relevant sensors, limited possibilities in terms of space and of course the necessity to keep the costs as low as possible. Especially in the non-road mobile machinery (NRMM) segment, the absence of sensors makes it difficult to apply standard electronic control systems, which are based on engine related input signals provided by sensors. One engine related signal, which is even provided by the simplest engine setup, is some form of the crankshaft speed since it is essential for the functionality of the engine.

A large number of testing procedures have been developed to ensure vehicle safety in common and extreme driving situations. However, these conventional testing procedures are insufficient for testing autonomous vehicles. They have to handle unexpected scenarios with the same or less risk a human driver would take. Currently, safety related systems are not adequately tested, e.g. in collision avoidance scenarios with pedestrians. Examples are the change of pedestrian behaviour caused by interaction, environmental influences and personal aspects, which cannot be tested in real environments. It is proposed to use augmented reality techniques. This method can be seen as a new (Augmented) Pedestrian in the Loop testing procedure.

Currently lithium-batteries are the most promising electrical-energy storage technology in fully-electric and hybrid vehicles. A crashworthy battery-design is among the numerous challenges development of electric-vehicles has to face. Besides of safe normal operation, the battery-design shall provide marginal threat to human health and environment in case of mechanical damage. Numerous mechanical abuse-tests were performed to identify load limits and the battery's response to damage. Cost-efficient testing is provided by taking into account that the battery-system's response to abuse might already be observed at a lower integration-level, not requiring testing of the entire pack. The most feasible tests and configurations were compiled and discussed. Adaptions of and additions to existing requirements and test-procedures as defined in standards are pointed out. Critical conditions that can occur during and after testing set new requirements to labs and test-rigs.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) for collision avoidance/mitigation have already demonstrated their benefit on vehicle safety. Often those systems have an additional functionality for comfort to assist the driver in non-critical driving. The verification of ADAS functionality using different test scenarios is currently investigated in many different projects worldwide. A harmonization of test scenarios and evaluation criteria is not yet accomplished. Often, these test scenarios focus on objective collision avoidance and not on the subjective interaction between driver and vehicle. The present study deals with the development of an experimental validation plan for the systems Automatic Cruise Control (ACC), Lane Departure Warning (LDW) and Lane Keeping Assist (LKA). Standardized driving maneuvers with two or more vehicles equipped with synchronized measurement are performed by professional test drivers.

Aircraft engines in the (ELA1) category, with a maximum power of up to 100kW, are characterized by a verified state of the art technology. New developments of engine technologies and control methods are very slowly being introduced into this engine segment. This trend is based on the fact that new technologies implemented in aircraft engines must be thoroughly certified and validated in a very complex and documented procedure. For this reason, most of the engines in this class are equipped with a carburetor as an air/fuel mixture preparation system. Moreover, naturally aspirated spark ignited engines are widely used in the aircraft category, with a take-off weight of up to 1000kg.

Aiming at the test safety problems in the early stage of self-driving cars development, firstly the virtual vehicle on-board CAN data acquisition module of the present project was designed based on virtual LabVIEW. Then a wireless remote control system for the self-driving car was constructed, which integrated the built virtual vehicle on-board CAN data acquisition system, the remote real-time image monitoring module and the remote upper computer control module based on ZigBee wireless transmission. It can execute the environmental awareness training and continuous and complex motion manipulation testing of the vehicle without relying on the driver, which can solve the safety problems in the tests of initial development of self-driving cars. Finally, the four-wheel independent steering electric vehicle was used as the self-driving test vehicle, and the wireless remote control system was tested on the double lane change type path and S-type path.

The pedestrian model in PC-Crash is based on a multi-body system, where several bodies are interconnected by joints. Each of these bodies can have different properties to represent the different parts of the human body. The joint properties can be specified independently as well. The theoretical background of the pedestrian model has been introduced in SAE 1999-01-0445 and the model shows to give a good correlation of the gross movement of the pedestrian compared to crash test data. As there are many parameters, which can and have to be specified for the pedestrian model as input parameters, an in depth validation of the different parameters has to be done to validate this model. This paper describes in detail the validation process for the pedestrian model. A significant number of crash tests (approx. 30) was used as a basis to compare the results of the simulations and the real movement of the test subjects.

During recent years the accident simulation program PC-Crash was developed. This software simulates vehicle movement before, during and after the impact, using 3D vehicle and scene models. When reconstructing car accidents, quite often questions arise regarding occupant movement and loading. Especially important is the influence of different types of restraint systems on the occupant. MADYMO® is a software tool which was developed by TNO in the Netherlands and which is well known in the automotive industry for the simulation of occupant movement. It allows the simulation of all kinds of modern restraint systems such as airbags and seatbelts with and without pretensioners. As the software is used in the automotive industry quite extensively, a huge validated database of dummy and human models is available. Since MADYMO® demands the setup of quite complicated input files, its use normally requires a high level of expertise.

Measuring emissions of internal combustion engines-not only at steady-state conditions, but also with highly dynamic test cycles-is an important issue in modern engine development. Due to the fact that ambient conditions have an essential influence on power and emissions of internal combustion engines, test beds used for such measurements typically incorporate intake air and exhaust back pressure control for reasons of repeatability, accuracy and comparability. As test cycle dynamics get faster and legal pressure tolerances get narrower, pressure control becomes more demanding and simple PI control schemes are pushed to their limits; therefore, more sophisticated control schemes are necessary. In this paper, a linearised model is first derived and then used to both simplify and optimise PI controller tuning. This is done by means of frequency domain methods. Limitations to such controllers and possible approaches to overcome them are discussed.

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) with a power-split system offer a variety of possibilities in reduction of CO2 emissions and fuel consumption. Power-split systems use a planetary gear sets to create a strong mechanical coupling between the internal combustion engine, the generator and the electric motor. This concept offers rather low oscillations and therefore passive damping components are not needed. Nevertheless, during acceleration or because of external disturbances, oscillations which are mostly influenced by the ICE, can still occur which leads to a drivability and performance downgrade. This paper proposes a design of an active damping control system which uses the electric motor to suppress those oscillations instead of handling them within the ICE control unit. The control algorithm is implemented as part of an existing hybrid controller without any additional hardware introduced.

Precise three-dimensional dummy head trajectories during crash tests are very important for vehicle safety development. To determine precise trajectories with a standard deviation of approximately 5 millimeters, three-dimensional video analysis is an approved method. Therefore the tracked body is to be seen on at least two cameras during the whole crash term, which is often not given (e.g. head dips into the airbag). This non-continuity problem of video analysis is surmounted by numerical integration of differential un-interrupted electrical rotation and acceleration sensor signals mounted into the tracked body. Problems of this approach are unknown sensor calibration errors and unknown initial conditions, which result in trajectory deviations above 10 centimeters.

Given approximately one million small and light aircraft in operation worldwide, icing detection and icing quantification of in-flight icing are still an open research topic. Despite technical means are available to de-ice on ground, there is a lack of a suitable control system based on sensor data to de-ice while the aircraft is airborne. Most often, it is still task of the pilot to visually inspect the icing status of the airfoil and/or other critical parts of the aircraft such as engine air intakes, which distracts the flight crew from flying the aircraft especially in IMC conditions. Based on preliminary simulation and tests in 2014 in a collaborative research project lasting from 2015 until 2018, the technology of energy self-sustaining, wireless, self-adhesive smart sensors for industrial sensing in an aerodynamically critical environment (i.e. wind turbines) was further investigated to fulfil general aviation requirements.

In the next 20 years the share of small electric vehicles (SEVs) will increase especially in urban areas. SEVs show distinctive design differences compared to traditional vehicles. Thus the consequences of impacts of SEVs with vulnerable road users (VRUs) and other vehicles will be different from traditional collisions. No assessment concerning vehicle safety is defined for vehicles within European L7e category currently. Focus of the elaborated methodology is to define appropriate test scenarios for this vehicle category to be used within a virtual tool chain. A virtual tool chain has to be defined for the realization of a guideline of virtual certification. The derivation and development of new test conditions for SEVs are described and are the main focus of this work. As key methodology a prospective methodical analysis under consideration of future aspects like pre-crash safety systems is applied.