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This paper presents the experimental work carried out on single-lap joints fastened together with bolts and nuts to investigate the contribution of mode shapes, and the effect that bolt sizes has in dissipating energy in built-up structures. Five different bolt sizes are chosen to assemble five single-bolted single-lap joints using aluminum plates. An analogous monolithic solid piece carved from the same aluminum material is used to determine the material damping and compare it against the damping from bolted joints. The dynamic response of all structures is captured under free-free boundary conditions, and the common modes are analyzed to understand the contribution and primary source of damping in the same range of the sampling frequency.

Efficiency and durability are key areas of research and development in modern racing drivetrains. Stringent regulations necessitate the need for components capable of operating under highly loaded conditions whilst being efficient and reliable. Downsizing, increasing the power-to-weight ratio and modification of gear teeth geometry to reduce friction are some of the actions undertaken to achieve these objectives. These approaches can however result in reduced structural integrity and component durability. Achieving a balance between system reliability and optimal efficiency requires detailed integrated multidisciplinary analyses, with the consideration of system dynamics, contact mechanics/tribology and stress analysis/structural integrity. This paper presents an analytical model to predict quasi-static contact power losses in lubricated spur gear sets operating under the Elastohydrodynamic regime of lubrication.

The two-dimensional, frictional tyre-road contact interaction is investigated. A transient contact algorithm is developed, consisting of an analytical belt model, a non linear sidewall structure and a discretized viscoelastic tread foundation. The relationship between the magnitude/shape of the predicted two-dimensional pressure distribution and the corresponding belt deformation is identified. The effect of vertical load and the role of sidewall non linearity are highlighted. The modal expansion/reduction method is proposed for the increase of the computational efficiency and the effect of the degree of reduction on the simulation accuracy is presented. The qualitative results are physically explained through the participation of certain modes in the equilibrium solution, offering directions for the application of the modal reduction method in shear force oriented tyre models.

A large contribution to the aerodynamic drag of a vehicle (30%(1) or more depending on vehicle shape) arises from the low base pressure in the wake region, especially on square-back configurations. A degree of base pressure recovery can be achieved through careful shape optimization, but the flow structures and mechanisms within the wake that cause these base pressure changes are not well understood. A more complete understanding of these mechanisms may provide opportunities for further drag reductions from both passive shape changes and in the future through the use of active flow control technologies. In this work surprisingly large changes in drag and lift coefficients of a square-back style vehicle have been measured as a result of physically small passive modifications. Tests were performed at quarter scale using a simplified vehicle model (Windsor Model) and at full scale using an MPV. The full scale vehicle was tested with and without a flat floor.

Various techniques to reduce the aerodynamic drag of bluff bodies through the mechanism of base pressure recovery have been investigated. These include, for example, boat-tailing, base cavities and base bleed. In this study a simple body representing a car shape is modified to include tapering of the rear upper body on both roof and sides. The effects of taper angle and taper length on drag and lift characteristics are investigated. It is shown that a significant drag reduction can be obtained with moderate taper angles. An unexpected feature is a drag rise at a particular taper length. Pressure data obtained on the rear surfaces and some wake flow visualisation using PIV are presented.

Particulate Matter (PM) emissions reduction is an imminent challenge for Direct Injection Spark Ignition (DISI) engine designers due to the introduction of Particulate Number (PN) standards in the proposed Euro 6 emissions legislation aimed at delivering the next phase of air quality improvements. An understanding of how the formation of combustion-derived nanoparticulates in engines is affected by the engine operating temperature is important for air quality improvement and will influence future engine design and control strategies. This investigation has examined the effect on combustion and PM formation when reducing the engine operating temperature to -7°C. A DISI single-cylinder optical research engine was modified to simulate a range of operating temperatures down to the proposed -7°C.

Various studies have shown that the level of wind noise experienced inside cars on the road in unsteady conditions can be substantially different from that measured in wind tunnel tests conducted using a low turbulence facility. In this paper a simple geometric body representing the cabin of a passenger car has been used to investigate the effects of free stream turbulence, (FST), on the A-pillar vortex flowfield and the side glass pressure distribution. Beneath the A-pillar vortex, both mean and dynamic pressures are increased by FST. The unsteady pressure can be associated with wind noise and the flow visualization shows the peak unsteadiness is related to the separation of the secondary vortex.

The use of Direct Injection for spark ignition engines is increasing, with a noticeable trend towards smaller flow orifices as the requirement for improved atomisation increases and improved manufacturing capabilities allow micron sized holes to be mass produced. It is necessary therefore to develop test rigs and diagnostic techniques that will allow the collection of data from inside real sized nozzles in order to validate CFD models and allow optimized nozzle geometries to be rapidly designed and produced. This paper demonstrates real sized optical nozzles and diagnostic techniques that have allowed geometry evaluation and optimization in pressure swirl and plain orifice nozzles as small as 150μm.

Thermoelectric generator (TEG) has received more and more attention in its application in the harvesting of waste thermal energy in automotive engines. Even though the commercial Bismuth Telluride thermoelectric material only have 5% efficiency and 250°C hot side temperature limit, it is possible to generate peak 1kW electrical energy from a heavy-duty engine. If being equipped with 500W TEG, a passenger car has potential to save more than 2% fuel consumption and hence CO2 emission reduction. TEG has advantages of compact and motionless parts over other thermal harvest technologies such as Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) and Turbo-Compound (TC). Intense research works are being carried on improving the thermal efficiency of the thermoelectric materials and increasing the hot side temperature limit. Future thermoelectric modules are expected to have 10% to 20% efficiency and over 500°C hot side temperature limit.

Clutches are commonly utilised in passenger type and off-road heavy-duty vehicles to disconnect the engine from the driveline and other parasitic loads. In off-road heavy-duty vehicles, along with fuel efficiency start-up functionality at extended ambient conditions, such as low temperature and intake absolute pressure are crucial. Off-road vehicle manufacturers can overcome the parasitic loads in these conditions by oversizing the engine. Caterpillar Inc. as the pioneer in off-road technology has developed a novel clutch design to allow for engine downsizing while vehicle’s performance is not affected. The tribological behaviour of the clutch will be crucial to start engagement promptly and reach the maximum clutch capacity in the shortest possible time and smoothest way in terms of dynamics. A multi-body dynamics model of the clutch system is developed in MSC ADAMS. The flywheel is introducing the same speed and torque as the engine (represents the engine input to the clutch).

Short tapered sections on the trailing edge of the roof, underside and sides of a vehicle are a common feature of the aerodynamic optimization process and are known to have a significant effect on the base pressure and thereby the vehicle drag. In this paper the effects of such high aspect ratio chamfers on the time-dependent base pressure are investigated. Short tapered surfaces, with a chord approximately equal to 4% of the overall model length, were applied to the trailing edges of a simplified passenger car model (the Windsor Body) and base pressure studied via an array of surface pressure tappings. Two sets of configurations were tested. In the first case, a chamfer was applied only to the top or bottom trailing edge. A combination of taper angles was also considered. In the second case, the chamfer was applied to the side edges of the model base, leaving the horizontal trailing edges squared.

The injection timing of a Diesel internal combustion engine typically follows a prescribed sequence depending on the operating condition using open loop control. Due to advances in sensors and digital electronics it is now possible to implement closed loop control based on in cylinder pressure values. Typically this control action is slow, and it may take several cycles or at least one cycle (cycle-to-cycle control). Using high speed sensors, it becomes technically possible to measure pressure deviations and correct them within the same cycle (intra-cycle control). For example the in cylinder pressure after the pilot inject can be measured, and the timing of the main injection can be adjusted in timing and duration to compensate any deviations in pressure from the expected reference value. This level of control can significantly reduce the deviations between cycles and cylinders, and it can also improve the transient behavior of the engine.

Piston compression rings are thin, incomplete circular structures which are subject to complex motions during a typical 4-stroke internal combustion engine cycle. Ring dynamics comprises its inertial motion relative to the piston, within the confine of its seating groove. There are also elastodynamic modes, such as the ring in-plane motions. A number of modes can be excited, dependent on the net applied force. The latter includes the ring tension and cylinder pressure loading, both of which act outwards on the ring and conform it to the cylinder bore. There is also the radial inward force as the result of ring-bore conjunctional pressure (i.e. contact force). Under transient conditions, the inward and outward forces do not equilibrate, resulting in the small inertial radial motion of the ring.

This paper describes a detailed study into the use of a pitot probe to measure air flow around an inlet valve under steady state conditions. The study was undertaken to assess the feasibility of the method for locating areas of a port and valve which may be contributing to a poor overall discharge coefficient. This method would provide a simple and cheap experimental tool for use throughout the industry. The method involves mounting a miniature internal chamfer pitot tube on a slider attached to the base of the valve. The probe can traverse the appropriate area by rotating the valve and moving it along the slide. Changing the probe allows measurements in different planes, allowing the whole region around the valve to be surveyed. The cylinder head complete with instrumentation is mounted on a steady flow rig. The paper presents the results obtained at different valve lifts on a production cylinder head.

There is a great deal of interest in new technologies to assist in reducing the CO2 output of passenger vehicles, as part of the drive to meet the limits agreed by the EU and the European Automobile Manufacturer's Association ACEA, itself a result of the Kyoto Protocol. For the internal combustion engine, the most promising of these include gasoline direct injection, downsizing and fully variable valve trains. While new types of spray-guided gasoline direct injection (GDI) combustion systems are finally set to yield the level of fuel consumption improvement which was originally promised for the so-called ‘first generation’ wall- and air-guided types of GDI, injectors for spray-guided combustion systems are not yet in production to help justify the added complication and cost of the NOx trap necessary with a stratified combustion concept.

This paper deals with experimental investigations of the in-cylinder flow structures under steady state conditions utilizing Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The experiments have been conducted on an engine head of a pent-roof type (Lotus) for a number of fixed valve lifts and different inlet valve configurations at two pressure drops, 250mm and 635mm of H2O that correlate with engine speeds of 2500 and 4000 RPM respectively. From the two-dimensional in-cylinder flow measurements, a tumble flow analysis is carried out for six planes parallel to the cylinder axis. In addition, a swirl flow analysis is carried out for one horizontal plane perpendicular to the cylinder axis at half bore downstream from the cylinder head (44mm). The results show the advantage of using the planar technique (PIV) for investigating the complete flow structures developed inside the cylinder.

In this paper the effects of a rough underbody on the rear wake structure of a simplified squareback model (the Windsor model) is investigated using balance measurements, base pressure measurements and two and three component planar PIV. The work forms part of a larger study to develop understanding of the mechanisms that influence overall base pressure and hence the resulting aerodynamic drag. In the work reported in this paper the impact of a rough underbody on the base pressure and wake flow structures is quantified at three different ground clearances. The underbody roughness has been created through the addition of five roughness strips to the underbody of the model and the effects on the wake at ground clearances of 10.3%, 17.3% and 24.2% of the model height are assessed. All work has been carried out in the Loughborough University Large Wind Tunnel with a ¼ scale model giving a blockage ratio of 4.4% for a smooth under-body or 4.5% with the maximum thickness roughness strips.

An expedient route to improving in-vehicle fuel economy in 4-stroke cycle engines is to reduce the swept volume of an engine and run it at a higher BMEP for any given output. The full-load performance of a larger capacity engine can be achieved through pressure charging. However, for maximum fuel economy, particularly at part-load, the expansion ratio, and consequently the compression ratio (CR) should be kept as high as possible. This is at odds with the requirement in pressure-charged gasoline engines to reduce the CR at higher loads due to the knock limit. In earlier work, the authors studied a pressure-charging system aimed at allowing a high CR to be maintained at all times. The operation of this type of system involves deliberately over-compressing the charge air, cooling it at the elevated pressure and temperature, and then expanding it down to the desired plenum pressure, ensuring a plenum temperature which can potentially become sub-atmospheric at full-load.

The introduction of drive-by-wire systems into modern vehicles has generated new challenges for the designers of embedded systems. These systems, based primarily on microcontrollers, need to achieve very high levels of reliability and availability, but also have to satisfy the strict cost and packaging constraints of the automotive industry. Advances in VLSI technology have allowed the development of single-chip systems, but have also increased the rate of intermittent and transient faults that come as a result of the continuous shrinkage of the CMOS process feature size. This paper presents a low-cost, fault-tolerant system-on-chip architecture suitable for drive-by-wire and other safety-related applications, based on a triple-modular-redundancy configuration at the processor execution pipeline level.

GTDI engines are becoming more efficient, whether individually or part of a HEV (Hybrid Electric Vehicle) powertrain. For the latter, this efficiency manifests itself as increase in zero emissions vehicle mileage. An ideal device for energy recovery is a turbogenerator (TG), and, when placed downstream the conventional turbine, it has minimal impact on catalyst light-off and can be used as a bolt-on aftermarket device. A Ricardo WAVE model of a representative GTDI engine was adapted to include a TG (Turbogenerator) and TBV (Turbine Bypass Valve) with the TG in a mechanical turbocompounding configuration, calibrated using steady state mapping data. This was integrated into a co-simulation environment with a SISO (Single-Input, Single-Output) dynamic controller developed in SIMULINK for the actuator control (with BMEP, manifold air pressure and TG pressure ratio as the controlled variables).