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Ammonia/urea-SCR is a mature technology, applied worldwide for the control of NOx emissions in combustion exhausts from thermal power plants, cogeneration units, incinerators and stationary diesel engines and more recently also from mobile sources. However a greater DeNOx activity at low temperatures is desired in order to meet more and more restrictive legislations. In this paper we report transient and steady state data collected over commercial Fe-ZSM-5 and V₂O₅-WO₃/TiO₂ catalysts showing high NOx reduction efficiencies in the 200 - 350°C T-range when NO and ammonia react with nitrates, e.g., in the form of an aqueous solution of ammonium nitrate. Under such conditions a new reaction occurs, the so-called "Enhanced SCR" reaction, 2 NH₃ + 2 NO + NH₄NO₃ → 3 N₂ + 5 H₂O.

The friction estimation at the tire-ground contact is crucial for the active safety of vehicles. Friction estimation is a key problem of vehicle dynamics and the ultimate solution is still unknown. However the proposed approach, based on a simple idea and on a simple hardware, provides an actual solution. The idea is to compare the tire characteristic at a given friction (nominal characteristic) with the actual characteristic that the tire has while running. The comparison among these two characteristics (the nominal one and the actual one) gives the desired friction coefficient. The friction coefficient is expressed in vector form and a number of running parameters are identified. The mentioned comparison is an efficient but complex algorithm based on a mathematical formulation of the tire characteristic. The actual tire characteristic is somehow measured in real time by a relatively simple smart wheel which is able to detect the three forces and the three moments acting at the hub.

A wheel able to measure the generalized forces at the hub of a race motorcycle has been developed and used. The wheel has a very limited mass. It is made from magnesium with a special structure to sense the forces and provide the required level of stiffness. The wheel has been tested both indoor for preliminary approval and on the track. The three forces and the three moments acting at the hub can be measured with a resolution of 1N and 0.3Nm respectively. A specifically programmed DSP (Digital Signal Processor) embedded in the sensor allows real-time acquisition and processing of the six signals of forces/torques components. The signals are sent via Bluetooth to an onboard receiver connected to the vehicle CAN (Controller Area Network) bus. Each signal is sampled at 200Hz. The wheel can be used to derive the actual tyre characteristics or to record the loads acting at the hub.

The influence of the inertia properties (mass, centre of gravity location, and inertia tensor) on the dynamic behaviour of the engine-gearbox system of a car is studied in this paper, devoting particular attention to drivability and comfort. The vibration amplitudes and the natural frequencies of the engine-gearbox system have been considered. Additionally, the loads transmitted to the car body have been taken into account. Both the experimental and the theoretical simulations confirmed that the engine-gearbox vibrations in the range 10 - 15 Hz are particularly sensitive to slight variation of the inertia properties. The effects on engine-gearbox vibrations due to half-axles, exhaust system, pipes and inner engine-gearbox fluids have been highlighted.

In recent years, concerns for environmental pollution and oil price stimulated the demand for vehicles based on technologies alternative to traditional IC engines. Nowadays several carmakers include hybrid vehicles among their offer and first full electric vehicles appear on the market. Among the different layout of the electric power-train, four in-wheel motors appear to be one of the most attractive. Besides increasing the inner room, this architecture offers the interesting opportunity of easily and efficiently distribute the driving/braking torque on the four wheels. This characteristic can be exploited to generate a yaw moment (torque vectoring) able to increase lateral stability and to improve the handling of a vehicle. The present paper presents and compares two different torque vectoring control strategies for an electric vehicle with four in-wheel motors. Performances of the control strategies are evaluated by means of numerical simulations of open and closed loop maneuvers.

The most common automotive drivelines transmit the engine torque to the driven axle through a differential. Semi-active versions of this device ([4], [5], [6]) have been recently conceived to improve vehicle handling at limit and under particular conditions; these differentials are based on the structural scheme of the passive one but they try to manipulate the vehicle dynamics by controlling the distribution of the driving torque on the wheels of the same axle thus generating a yaw moment. Unfortunately a semi-active differential is not able to perform a complete yaw control since the torque can only be transferred from the faster wheel to the slower one; on the other hand, active differentials ([11], [12], [13]) allow to generate the most appropriate yaw moment controlling both the amount of transferred torque and its direction.

In the last years automotive industry has shown a growing interest in exploring the field of vehicle dynamic control, improving handling performances and safety of the vehicle, and actuating devices able to optimize the driving torque distribution to the wheels. These techniques are defined as torque vectoring. The potentiality of these systems relies on the strong coupling between longitudinal and lateral vehicle dynamics established by tires and powertrain. Due to this fact the detailed (and correct) simulation of the dynamic behaviour of the driveline has a strong importance in the development of these control systems, which aim is to optimize the contact forces distribution. The aim of this work is to build an integrated vehicle and powertrain model in order to provide a proper instrument to be used in the development of such systems, able to reproduce the dynamic interaction between vehicle and driveline and its effects on the handling performances.

Dynamic tests have been performed on carbon fiber racing seats following the FIA regulations. The tests have shown, in rear impact tests, a relatively strong rebound leading to large forward bending of neck, and, in side impact tests, very large lateral displacement of the head, the latter protruding dangerously towards hard portions of the car structure. Stiffening the seat back by steel struts results in reducing strongly both the motion and the acceleration of the head. Simulations of the dynamics of the tests have been done with multi-body models, including the Hybrid III dummy and seat deflection, by means of the program VEDYAC. It has been found that computer simulation can predict very accurately the result of a test, provided the numerical models have been carefully calibrated to match the dummy tolerance bands. Once they have been calibrated and validated with a number of tests, the computer models can be very useful to extend the test results to different test conditions.

Tire-road interaction is one of the main concerns in the design of control strategies for active/semi-active differentials oriented to improve handling performances of a vehicle. In particular, the knowledge of the friction coefficient at the tire-road interface is crucial for achieving the best performance in any working condition. State observers and estimators have been developed at the purpose, based on the measurements traditionally carried out on board vehicle (steer angle, lateral acceleration, yaw rate, wheels speed). However, until today, the problem of tire-road friction coefficient estimation (and especially of its maximum value) has not completely been solved. Thus, active control systems developed so far rely on a driver manual selection of the road adherence condition (anyway characterized by a rough and imprecise quality) or on a conservative tuning of the control logic in order to ensure vehicle safety among different tire-road friction coefficients.

The paper presents a new test rig (named RuotaVia) composed basically by a drum (2,6 m diameter), providing a running contact surface for vehicle wheels. A number of measurements on either full vehicles or vehicle sub-systems (single suspension system or single tyre) can be performed. Tire characteristics influencing rollover can be assessed. The steady-state maximum loads are as follows: Radial: 100kN, tangential: 100kN, lateral (axial with respect to the drum): 100kN. The superstructure carrying a measuring hub can excite the wheel under test up to 20 Hz in lateral and vertical directions. The steer angle range is ± 25 deg, the camber range is ± 80 deg. The minimum eigenfrequency of the drum is higher than 90 Hz and its maximum tangential speed is 440 km/h.

Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and Antilock Braking System (ABS) are nowadays a standard equipment for passenger cars. ESP increases vehicle safety by applying differential braking torque to the wheels while cornering, thus it extends the area of intervention of ABS which prevents the wheels from being locked up in emergency braking, especially on low friction road surfaces, allowing the driver to maintain steering control of the vehicle, to avoid obstacles and to reduce vehicle stopping distance on most road surfaces. This paper describes a flexible mechatronic test bench for ESP/ABS Electronic Control Unit (ECU) based on Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation technique. It consists of a passenger car hydraulic braking system (from master cylinder to brake calipers), with the ESP/ABS ECU integrated and a flexible real-time platform, which simulates vehicle dynamics.

The paper investigates the interaction between soil and tractor tires through a 2D numerical model. The tire is schematized as a rigid ring presenting a series of rigid tread bars on the external circumference. The outer profile of the tire is divided into a series of elements, each one able to exchange a normal and a tangential contact force with the ground. A 2D soil model was developed to compute the forces at the ground-tire interface: the normal force is determined on the basis of the compression of the soil generated by the sinking of the tire. The soil is modeled through a layer of springs characterized by two different stiffness for the loading (lower stiffness) and unloading (higher stiffness) condition. This scheme allows to introduce a memory effect on the soil which results stiffer and keeps a residual sinking after the passage of the tire. The normal contact force determines the maximum value of tangential force provided before the soil fails.

In this paper the lightweight design and construction of road vehicle aluminum wheels is dealt with, referring particularly to safety. Dedicated experimental tests aimed at assessing the fatigue life behavior of aluminum alloy A356 - T6 have been performed. Cylindrical specimens have been extracted from three different locations in the wheel. Fully reversed strain-controlled and load-controlled fatigue tests have been performed and the stress/strain-life curves on the three areas of the wheel have been computed and compared. The constant amplitude rotary bending fatigue test of the wheel has been simulated by means of Finite Element method. The FE model has been validated by measuring the strain at several points of the wheel during the actual test. From the FE model, the stress tensor time history on the whole wheel over a loading cycle has been extracted.

In the last years the number of electronic controllers of vehicle dynamics applied to chassis components has increased dramatically. They use lookup table of the primary order vehicle global parameters as yaw rate, lateral acceleration, steering angle, car velocity, that define the ideal behavior of the vehicle. They are usually based on PID controllers which compare the actual behavior of every measured real vehicle data to the desired behavior, from look up table. The controller attempts to keep the measured quantities the same as the tabled quantities by using ESP, TC (brakes and throttle), CDC (control shocks absorbers), EDIFF(active differential) and 4WS (rear wheels active toe). The performances of these controls are good but not perfect. The improvement can be achieved by replacement of the lookup tables with a fast vehicle model running in parallel to the real vehicle.

This study examines the impact of slip in aero-thermal conditions of supercooled large droplets (SLD) produced in an Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT) on the ice accretion characteristics. The study identifies potential biases in the SLD model development based on IWT data and numerical predictions that assume the SLD to be in aerothermal equilibrium with the IWT airflow. To obtain realistic temperature and velocity data for each droplet size class in the test section of the Braunschweig Icing Wind Tunnel (BIWT), a Lagrangian droplet tracking solver was used within a Monte Carlo framework. Results showed that SLDs experience considerable slips in velocity and temperature due to their higher inertia and short residence time in the Braunschweig IWT. Large droplets were found to be warmer and slower than the flow in the test section, with larger droplets experiencing larger aerothermal slips.

A new bench for the rotating bending fatigue tests of tempered steel wires is presented. The new bench is used to check the spring wire just before it is finally winded to realize a spring. The bench is basically a four-point bending machine. There are two main differences with respect to current bending machines. The first one is that the focus is on semi-finished components (more than 1 meter long), rather than standard small-scale specimens. The second one is that there is a non-linear configuration of the tested component due to its length. The bench design has provided some unreferenced features that make the bench quite accurate and effective in producing quick fatigue assessments. A rotor-dynamic study has allowed to perform tests at 50 Hz. As a preliminary application, some fatigue bending tests of tempered steel wires are described and discussed.

Aim of this study is to analyze the benefits of the measures provided by smart tyres on tyre-road friction coefficient and vehicle sideslip angle estimation. In particular, a smart tyre constituted by 2 tri-axial accelerometers glued on the tyre inner liner is considered which is able to provide the measures of the tyre-road contact forces once per wheel turn. These measures are added to the ones usually present onboard vehicle (steer angle, lateral acceleration and yaw rate) and following included into an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) based on a single-track vehicle model. Performance of the proposed observer is evaluated on a series of handling maneuvers and its robustness to road bank angle, tyre and vehicle parameters variation is discussed.

The lightweight seat of a high performance car is designed taking into account a rear impact, i.e. the crash due to an impulse applied from the rear. The basic parameters of the seat structure are derived resorting to simulations of a crash with a test dummy positioned on the seat. The simulations provide the forces acting at the seat structure, in particular the forces applied at the joint between the seat cushion and the seat backrest are taken into account. Such a joint is simulated as a plastic hinge and dissipates some of the crash energy. The simulations are validated by means of indoor tests with satisfactory results. A tool has been developed for the preliminary design of lightweight seats for high performance cars.

For passenger cars, individual tyre model parameters, used in vehicle models able to simulate vehicle handling behavior, are traditionally derived from expensive component indoor laboratory tests as a result of an identification procedure minimizing the error with respect to force and slip measurements. Indoor experiments on agricultural tyres are instead more challenging and thus generally not performed due to tyre size and applied forces. However, the knowledge of their handling characteristics is becoming more and more important since in the next few years, all agricultural vehicles are expected to run on ordinary asphalt roads at a speed of 80km/h. The present paper presents a methodology to identify agricultural tyres' handling characteristics based only on the measurements carried out on board vehicle (vehicle sideslip angle, yaw rate, lateral acceleration, speed and steer angle) during standard handling maneuvers (step-steers, J-turns, etc.), instead than during indoor tests.

Brake calipers for high-end cars are typically realized using Aluminum alloys, with Silicon as the most common alloying element. Despite the excellent castability and machinability of Aluminum-Silicon alloys (AlSix), anodization is often required in order to increase its corrosion resistance. This is particularly true in Chlorides-rich environments where Aluminum can easily corrode. Even if anodization process is known for almost 100 years, anodization of AlSix -based materials is particularly challenging due to the presence of eutectic Silicon precipitates. These show a poor electric conductivity and a slow oxidation kinetics, leading to inhomogeneous anodic layers. Continuous research and process optimization are required in order to develop anodic layers with enhanced morphological and electrochemical properties, targeting a prolonged resistance of brake calipers under endurance corrosive tests (e.g. >1000 hours Neutral Salt Spray (NSS) tests).