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Trans Tech recently debuted the all-electric eTrans school bus providing a total zero emission school bus. The presentation will demonstrate Smith Electric Vehicles and their history with electric vehicles. The presentation will help ensure that everybody has an idea of what the electric school bus will do and to dispel any rumors about the vehicle. Presenter Brian S. Barrington, Trans Tech. Bus

A main challenge when developing next generation architectures for automated driving ECUs is to guarantee reliable functionality. Today’s fail safe systems will not be able to handle electronic failures due to the missing “mechanical” fallback or the intervening driver. This means, fail operational based on redundancy is an essential part for improving the functional safety, especially in safety-related braking and steering systems. The 2-out-of-2 Diagnostic Fail Safe (2oo2DFS) system is a promising approach to realize redundancy with manageable costs. In this contribution, we evaluate the reliability of this concept for a symmetric and an asymmetric Electronic Power Steering (EPS) ECU. For this, we use a Markov chain model as a typical method for analyzing the reliability and Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) in majority redundancy approaches. As a basis, the failure rates of the used components and the microcontroller are considered.

Flash boiling spray is effective in improving the atomization and evaporation characteristics for gasoline direct injection engines. However, for a multi-hole injector the morphology structure of spray has an obvious change with the fuel temperature increasing or the ambient pressure decreasing, which influences the process of mixture formation and flame propagation. Specially, the spray collapses with both long penetration and a narrow spray angle above certain high superheat degree, which deteriorates air/fuel mixing and hence increases emissions. It is not desired for engine applications while the mechanism of spray structure transformation for multi-hole injector still remains unclear. In the present study, a systematic flash boiling spray model for multi-hole injector is built to investigate the flash boiling spray of multi-hole injector.

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers with incredible levels of peripheral integration. As a result, performance can no longer be measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). A microcontroller's effectiveness is based on coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, the designer needs benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment.

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers whose performance can no longer be measured in MIPS. Instead, their effectiveness is based on a coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, what the designer needs are benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment. This presentation will explore the role of new benchmarks in the development of complex automotive applications.

The increasingly stringent requirements in relation to emission reduction and onboard diagnostics are pushing the Chinese automotive industry toward more innovative solutions and a rapid increase in electronic control performance. To manage the system complexity the architecture will require being well structure on hardware and software level. The paper introduces GEMS-K1 (Gasoline Engine Management System - Kit 1). GEMS-K1 is a platform being compliant with Euro IV emission regulation for gasoline engines. The application software is developed using modeling language, the code is automatically generated from the model. The driver software has a well defined structure including microcontroller abstraction layer and ECU abstraction layer. The hardware is following design rules to be robust, 100% testable and easy to manufacture. The electronic components use the latest innovation in terms of architecture and technologies.

This paper considers the verification of non-standard CAN network topologies of the physical layer at high speed transmission rate (500.0Kbps and 1.0Mbps). These network topologies including single star, multiple stars, and hybrid topologies (multiple stars in combination with linear bus or with ring topology) are simulated by using behavior modeling language (VHDL-AMS) in comparison to measurement. Throughout the verification process, CAN transceiver behavioral model together with other CAN physical layer simulation components have been proved to be very accurate. The modeling of measurement environment of the CAN network is discussed, showing how to get the measurement and simulation results well matched. This demonstrates that the simulation solution is reliable, which is highly desired and very important for the verification requirement in CAN physical layer design.

The increasing legal requirements for safety, emission reduction, fuel economy and onboard diagnosis systems push the market for more innovative solutions with rapidly increasing complexity. Hence, the embedded systems that will have to control the automobiles have been developed at such an extent that they are now equivalent in scale and complexity to the most sophisticated avionics systems. This paper will demonstrate the key elements to provide a powerful, scalable and configurable solution that offers a migration pass to evolution and even revolution of automotive Sensors and Sensor interfaces. The document will explore different architectures and partitioning. Sensor technologies such as magnetic field sensors based on the hall effect as well as bulk and surface silicon micro machined sensors will be mapped to automotive applications by examples. Functions such as self-test, self-calibration and self-repair will be developed.

Driven by factors like consumption, power output per liter, comfort and more stringent exhaust gas standards the powertain control area, has developed rapidly in the last decades. This trend has also brought with it many innovations in the ignition application. Today we can see a trend to Pencil-coil or Plug-top-coil ignition systems. The next step in system partitioning is to remove the power driver from the ECU and place it directly in/on the coil body. The advantages of the new partitioning - e.g. no high voltage wires, reduced power dissipation on the ECU - are paid with different, mainly tougher requirements for the electronic components. By using specialized technologies for the different functions - IGBT for switching the power, SPT for protection, supply and diagnostics - in chip-on-chip technology all required functions for a decentralized ignition system can be realized in a TO220/ TO263 package.

As the demand for enhanced comfort, safety and differentiation with new features continues to grow and as electronics and software enable most of these, the number of electronic units or components within automobiles will continue to increase. This will increase the overall system complexity, specifically with respect to the number of controller actuators such as e-motors. However, hard constraints on cost and on physical boundaries such as maximum power dissipation per unit and pin-count per unit/connector require new solutions to alternative system partitioning. Vehicle manufacturers, as well as system and semiconductor suppliers are striving for increased scalability and modularity to allow for most cost optimal high volume configurations while featuring platform reuse and feature differentiation. This paper presents new semiconductor based approaches with respect to technologies, technology mapping and assembly technologies.

In terms of modern technical systems, the automotive sector is characterized by escalating complexity and functionality requirements. The development of embedded control systems has to meet highest demands regarding process-, time- and cost-optimization. Hence, the efficiency of software development becomes a crucial competitive advantage. Systems design engineers need effective tools and methods to achieve exemplary speed and productivity within the development phase. To obtain such tools and methods, semiconductor manufacturers and tool manufacturers must work closely together. Within the joint efforts of ETAS and Infineon, the software tool suite ASCET-SD was enhanced to generate efficient C code for Infineon's TriCore architecture mapped on ETAS's real-time operating system ERCOSEK. The processor interface to application & calibration tools was realized using the ETK probe based on a JTAG/Nexus link at very high bandwidth.

Chinese new legislations on two wheels and mopeds have been published recently. Depending on the latest exhaust statistic analyses, with the resulting of tighter limits, the application of catalytic converters is becoming a prevalent and a cost-efficient solution for Chinese motorcycle manufacturers. The phenomenon of exhaust temperature changes rapidly during real driving process is well known as one of major destructive factors which have effects upon converter's durability. One 125 cm3 motorcycle is selected as a typical model in this research project. Exhaust temperature of the 125 cm3 motorcycle is measured and recorded during the process of ECE 40 driving cycle. A simulation test system has been set up successfully depending on those temperature data. Conversion ratio of converter sample lost distinctly after 18 hours' thermal impact tests. After further analyses, there were not evident changes in microstructure and substance on the surface of converter.

The concept of “Simulatable Specifications” is applied to a Smart Bridge-Driver-IC in order to support an integrated development process of a Direct Injection System. It is demonstrated that the impact of the IC concept on system performance can be investigated long before first Silicon is available. Thus, considerable time in systems development can be saved and, in addition, the feedback loop for conceptual redesigns of the chip is reduced by up to 60 percent.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of injection pressures and fuel temperatures on the secondary injection spray evolution at the end of injection from a multi-hole gasoline direct injection (GDI) injector by Mie-scattering technique. The results of this paper show that the overall injection process can be classified into five stages which are injection delay stage, main injection stage, dwell stage, secondary injection stage and ligaments breakup stage respectively. Especially, the secondary injection occurs at the end of main injection, which is abnormal and undesirable spray behaviors. During the injection, big droplets and ligaments are injected through nozzle orifices at low speed. As the injection pressure increases, the phase of the secondary injection advances, and the injection duration decreases. At medium injection pressures (at 6, 8 MPa), more quantity of fuel are injected as ligaments.

A cooperation of several research partners supported by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education proposes a new active matrix LED light source. A multi pixel flip chip LED array is directly mounted to an active driver IC. A total of 1024 pixel can be individually addressed through a serial data bus. Several of these units are integrated in a prototype headlamp to enable advanced light distribution patterns in an evaluation vehicle.

Driven by the growing internet and remote connectivity of automobiles, combined with the emerging trend to automated driving, the importance of security for automotive systems is massively increasing. Although cyber security is a common part of daily routines in the traditional IT domain, necessary security mechanisms are not yet widely applied in the vehicles. At first glance, this may not appear to be a problem as there are lots of solutions from other domains, which potentially could be re-used. But substantial differences compared to an automotive environment have to be taken into account, drastically reducing the possibilities for simple reuse. Our contribution is to address automotive electronics engineers who are confronted with security requirements. Therefore, it will firstly provide some basic knowledge about IT security and subsequently present a selection of automotive specific security use cases.

The automotive industry experiences a major change as vehicles are gradually becoming a part of the Internet. Security concepts based on the closed-world assumption cannot be deployed anymore due to a constantly changing adversary model. Automotive Ethernet as future in-vehicle network and a new E/E Architecture have different security requirements than Ethernet known from traditional IT and legacy systems. In order to achieve a high level of security, a new multi-layer approach in the vehicle which responds to special automotive requirements has to be introduced. One essential layer of this holistic security concept is to restrict non-authorized access by the deployment of embedded firewalls. This paper addresses the introduction of automotive firewalls into the next-generation domain architecture with a focus on partitioning of its features in hardware and software.

The evolution of surface functional groups (SFGs) and the graphitization degree of soot generated in premixed methane flames are studied and the correlation between them is discussed. Test soot samples were obtained from an optimized thermophoretic sampling system and probe sampling system. The SFGs of soot were determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) after removing the soluble impurities from the soot samples, while the graphitization degree of soot was characterized by Raman spectrum and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). The results reveal that the number of aliphatic C-H groups and C=O groups shows an initial increase and then decrease in the sooting history. The large amount of aliphatic C-H groups and small amount of aromatic C-H groups in the early stage of the soot mass growth process indicate that aliphatic C-H groups make a major contribution to the early stage of soot mass growth.

Matching fuel injection and airflow motion is critical for the optimization of fuel-air mixing and combustion process in diesel engines. In this study, the effects of swirl flow on liquid droplet motion and the selection of swirl ratio, which are known as the major concern in organizing airflow motion, were investigated based on theoretical analysis of droplet trajectories. The evaporating droplets with various initial conditions are assumed to be transported in a solid-body-like swirl field, and their trajectories were derived based on force analysis. To evaluate fuel-air mixing quality, a new parameter with respect to fuel vapor distribution was proposed. Based on this methodology, the effects of swirl velocity, droplet size, as well as liquid-gas density ratio on droplet trajectory were discussed under diesel-engine-like boundary conditions.

ISO 26262 is the actual standard for Functional Safety of automotive E/E (Electric/Electronic) systems. One of the challenges in the application of the standard is the distribution of safety related activities among the participants in the supply chain. In this paper, the concept of a Safety Element out of Context (SEooC) development will be analyzed showing its current problematic aspects and difficulties in implementing such an approach in a concrete typical automotive development flow with different participants (e.g. from OEM, tier 1 to semiconductor supplier) in the supply chain. The discussed aspects focus on the functional safety requirements of generic hardware and software development across the supply chain where the final integration of the developed element is not known at design time and therefore an assumption based mechanism shall be used.