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This research was to model a 6×4 tractor-trailer rig using TruckSim and simulate severe braking maneuvers with hardware in the loop and software in the loop simulations. For the hardware in the loop simulation (HIL), the tractor model was integrated with a 4s4m anti-lock braking system (ABS) and straight line braking tests were conducted. In developing the model, over 100 vehicle parameters were acquired from a real production tractor and entered into TruckSim. For the HIL simulation, the hardware consisted of a 4s4m ABS braking system with six brake chambers, four modulators, a treadle and an electronic control unit (ECU). A dSPACE simulator was used as the “interface” between the TruckSim computer model and the hardware.

A new approach to achieve better customer perception of overall vehicle quietness is the sound balance improvement of vehicle interior sound during driving. Interior sound is classified into 3 primary sound source shares such as engine sound relative to revolution speed, tire road noise and wind noise relative to vehicle speed. Each interior sound shares are classified using the synchronous time-domain averaging method. The sound related to revolution order of engine and auxiliaries is considered as engine sound share, tire road noise and wind noise shares are extracted by multiple coherent output power analysis. Sound balance analysis focuses on improving the relative difference in interior sound share level between the 3 primary sound sources. Virtual sound simulator which is able to represent various driving conditions and able to adjust imaginary sound share is built for several vehicles in same compact segment.

The series-parallel hybrid electric vehicle(HEV), which employs a planetary gear set to combine one internal combustion engine(ICE) and two electric motors(EMs), can take advantages of both series and parallel hybrid system. The efficient powertrain operating point of the system can be obtained by the instantaneous optimization of equivalent fuel consumption. However, heavy computational requirements and variable constraints of the optimization process make it difficult to build real-time control strategy. To overcome the difficulty, this study suggests the control strategy which divides the optimization process into 2 stages. In the first stage, a target of charge/discharge power is determined based on equivalent fuel consumption, then in the second stage, an engine operating point is determined taking power transfer efficiency into account.

Supervisory control strategy of a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) provides target powers and operating points of an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. To promise efficient driving of the HEV, it is needed to find the proper values of control parameters which are used in the strategy. However, it is very difficult to find the optimal values of the parameters by doing experimental tests, since there are plural parameters which have dependent relationship between each other. Furthermore variation of the test results makes it difficult to extract the effect of a specific parameter change. In this study, a model based parameter optimization method is introduced. A vehicle simulation model having the most of dynamics related to fuel consumption was developed and validated with various experimental data from real vehicles. And then, the supervisory control logic including the control parameters was connected to the vehicle model.

Invisible Passenger-side Airbag (IPAB) door system must be designed with a weakened area such that the airbag will break through the Instrument Panel (IP) in the intended manner, with no flying debris at any temperature. At the same time, there must be no cracking or sharp edges at the head impact test (ECE 21.01). Needless to say, Head impact test must keep pace with the deployment test. In this paper, we suggested soft airbag door system that is integrally molded with a hard instrument panel by using Two-shot molding. First of all, we set up the design parameters of IPAB door for the optimal deployment and head impact performance by CAE analysis. And then we optimized the open-close time at each gate of the mold so that the soft and hard material could be integrally molded with the intended boundary. We could make the boundary of two materials more constant by controlling the open-close time of each gate with resin temperature sensor.

As CO2 emissions from vehicles is gaining a global attention the low fuel consuming power-train is in much greater demand than before. Some alternatives are suggested but the HSDI diesel engine would be the most realistic solution. Vehicle simulation shows that low fuel consuming car can be realized by applying 1∼1.2L HSDI diesel engine in vehicles weighing about 750kg. While the direct injection diesel engine has been researched for a long time enhancement of mixing between air and fuel in a limited space makes it challenging area to develop a small swept volume HSDI diesel engine. We are investigating small HSDI diesel engine combustion technologies as an effort to realize low fuel consuming vehicle. Our main objective in this study is to have a better understanding of the combustion related parameters from such a small size HSDI diesel engine in order to improve engine performance.

Recently weight reduction is increasingly needed in automotive industry to improve fuel efficiency and to meet a CO2 emission requirement. In this paper, we prepared composite body panels for the lightweight vehicle based on a small passenger car. Fender, roof, door, side outer panel, and tailgate are made from hand layup using a glass/carbon hybrid reinforcement. Hood is made from low pressure sheet molding compound (SMC) to investigate feasibility of mass production. Both hand layup and low pressure SMC materials are newly developed and their physical properties are examined. CAE simulation was done for strength analysis and optimization of thickness for the body panels.

Conventional steering system has a mechanical connection between the driver and the front tires of the vehicle, but in steer-by-wire system, there is no such a connection. Instead, actuators, positioned in the vehicle's front corners receive input from the control module and turn the front wheels accordingly. In steer-by-wire system, steering wheel is an important part that not only transfers driver's steering input to the controller but also provides a road feedback feeling to the driver's hand. Thus the reactive torque actuator, providing road feedback, plays an important role in steer-by-wire system. In conventional steer-by-wire-system, a motor was used as a reactive torque actuator. But using motor has some disadvantages such as an oscillatory feeling, and improper and potentially dangerous acceleration of the steering wheel by the motor when driver's hands are released from steering wheel abruptly.

Hands-free stability, one of the handling characteristics of a vehicle, is a stability criterion evaluated in case of a driver's steering wheel release after a certain steering input during driving. During the development process, a hands-free-unstable vehicle needs many steering and suspension parts to be repeatedly tested to improve the performance. In this paper, CAE methods are proposed to investigate easily the influence of the steering and suspension design parameters on the hands-free stability. And the results of CAE methods were compared with the prototype vehicle test to verify the validity of the methods.

Voice Recognition (VR) systems have become an integral part of the infotainment systems in the current automotive industry. However, its recognition rate is impacted by external factors such as vehicle cabin noise, road noise, and internal factors which are a function of the voice engine in the system itself. This paper analyzes the VR performance under the effect of two external factors, vehicle cabin noise and the speakers’ speech patterns based on gender. It also compares performance of mid-level sedans from different manufacturers.

Ride quality of medium truck became a very important factor in the suspension design, due to the demand of more comfortable ride of passengers. This study describes how to determine and evaluate design parameters related to the chassis suspension system with time and frequency analysis. The spring stiffness and damping force of the chassis suspension system were obtained by observing the vertical acceleration PSD. The simulation was carried out on various road profiles, which was suggested by ISO. The pitching motion of the medium size truck was observed to improve the ride quality. A computer simulated truck model was constructed using DADS, a commercial dynamic analysis software, in order to simulate the truck motions. From the result of the sensitivity analysis of suspension parameters, it was concluded that the spring and the shock absorbers affect the pitching of the vehicle. In order to validate the computer simulated truck model, a physical prototype was constructed and tested.

A new recycled material has been developed by using the scrap of tail lamp assembly, made of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) for the lens and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene terpolymer (ABS) for the housing. Lamp scrap was extruded in a twin-screw extruder, and mechanical properties of the scrap were compared with ABS, PMMA, and an ABS/PMMA (60/40) blend. The recycled material from 100% tail lamp scrap has similar modulus to the 60/40 blend, however, notched Izod impact strength and thermal resistance were lower than that of the blend, probably due to the presence of hot melt adhesive and silver paint. Scrap/virgin polymer mixtures showed improved thermal resistance and impact strength. The effects of composition and type of mixed polymer on mechanical properties were also investigated.

We developed the hard IP (Instrument Panel) that is integrally over molded with a soft layer (TPO, Thermo Plastic Olefin) for the soft feeling and cost reduction. And also we produced the cost-effective PAB(Passenger-side Airbag) door system that had an in-mold tearseam and avoided competitors' patents simultaneously. The development procedure of this technology is; ① Material for overmolding ② Design optimization ③ Solving tool challenges. The reduction of process through integrally molding with soft material helped to accomplish a soft feeling on the IP and cost reduction at the same time. The deployment, head impact and heat aging tests were conducted and 5 patents were applied such as the optimization of the mold structure and injection condition.

As electric vehicles become more widespread, such vehicles may be subject to “range anxiety” due to the risk of discharging during driving or the discharging when left unused for a long period. Accordingly, a vehicle equipped with a mobile charger that can provide a charge in an emergency. The vehicle with the mobile charger is usually composed of a large capacity battery, a power converter in a small truck. However, the large capacity battery and the power converter are disadvantageous in that they are large in size and expensive and should be produced as a special vehicle. In this paper, we propose a method to solve the problem using an internal EV system without requiring an additional power generation, battery and a charging-and-discharging device. The method is a novel Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) fast charging control system utilizing motor and inverter in EV.

In case of all gasoline vehicles such as the passenger vehicle, heavy duty truck and light duty truck etc., a fuel pump is located inside the fuel tank and transfers the fuel to an engine for stable driving, however, engine stall can be occurred by low pressure fuel pump. The boiling temperature of gasoline fuel is very low, the initial boiling point is around 40°C so fuel can boil easily while driving and end boiling point is around 190°C. It boils sequentially depending on the temperature. It becomes the criteria to determine the amount of vapor released inside the fuel tank at high temperature. The main cause of engine stall at high temperature is rapid fuel boiling by increasing fuel temperature. This causes a lot of vapor. Such vapor flows into the fuel pump which leading to decrease the pump load and the current consumption of the fuel pump continuously. This ultimately results in engine stall.

The electrical power system is the vital lifeline to most of the control systems on modern vehicles. The demands on the system are highly complex, and a detailed understanding of the system behavior is necessary both to the process of systems integration and to the economic design of a specific control system or actuator. The vehicle electric power system, which consists of two major components: a generator and a battery, has to provide numerous electrical and electronic systems with enough electrical energy. A detailed understanding of the characteristics of the electric power system, electrical load demands, and the driving environment such as road, season, and vehicle weight are required when the capacities of the generator and the battery are to be determined for a vehicle. An easy-to-use and inexpensive simulation program may be needed to avoid the over/under design problem of the electric power system. A vehicle electric power simulator is developed in this study.

Polylactide (PLA), which is one of the most important biocompatible polyesters that are derived from annually renewable biomass such as corn and sugar beets, has attracted much attention for automotive parts application. The manufacturing method of PLA is the ring-opening polymerization of the dimeric cyclic ester of lactic acid, lactide. For the PLA composites including stereocomplexed with L- and D-PLA, we developed the unit processes such as fermentation, separation, lactide conversion, and polymerization. We investigated D-lactic acid fermentation with a view to obtaining the strains capable of producing D-lactic acid, and through catalyst screening test for polycondensation and depolymerization reactions, we got a new method which shortens the whole reaction time of lactide synthesis step. Poly(d-lactide) is obtained from the ring-opening polymerization of d-lactide. Also we investigated several catalysts and polymerization conditions.

This work studied the control technique for the engine clutch engagement at launch for the TMED parallel HEV for the improved drivability and dynamic performance. Analysis are done on the speed synchronization of the clutch plates, the speed control using the starter motor (ISG), and the fluid pressure control for the clutch. Possible external factors such as changes in the friction coefficient of transmission fluid, temperature variation, auxiliary power and pressure losses are identified and their effects on the targeted dynamic performance are examined. The targeted system performance was achieved with a learning control technique using fluid pressure as the only control input. This involves the compensation for the effect of external factors on the fluid pressure profile and this effect is memorized for the subsequent slip-launch application.

This paper proposes an effective nonlinear bicycle model including longitudinal, lateral, and yaw motions of a vehicle. This bicycle model uses a simplified piece-wise linear tire model and tire force tuning algorithm to produce closely matching vehicle trajectory compared to real vehicle for wide vehicle operation ranges. A simplified piece-wise tire model that well represents nonlinear tire forces was developed. The key parameters of this model can be chosen from measured tire forces. For the effects of dynamic load transfer due to sharp vehicle maneuvers, a tire force tuning algorithm that dynamically adjusts tire forces of the bicycle model based on measured vehicle lateral acceleration is proposed. Responses of the proposed bicycle model have been compared with commercial vehicle dynamics model (CarSim) through simulation in various vehicle maneuvers (ramp steer, sine-with-dwell).

Many high risks of failure in developing and applying new technologies exist in the recent automotive industry because of big volume of selling cars in a global market. Several recalls cost companies more than $ 100 million per problem. New technologies always have uncertainty in performing intended functions at various given conditions despite the fact that engineers do their best to develop technologies to meet all the requirements. Uncertainty of new technologies put companies into danger of failing in their business. Therefore, many companies tend to take interest in reducing risks from the uncertainty in technologies, but the increasing complexity of modern automotive technologies make it difficult to develop complete technologies. A new engineering methodology called SPEED Engineering was introduced to reduce the risks of new technology applications and to facilitate engineers to conceive innovative ideas dominating the market in the future.