Search Results

Ford Motor Company is introducing “EcoBoost” gasoline turbocharged direct injection (GTDI) engine technology in the 2010 Lincoln MKS. A logical enhancement of EcoBoost technology is the use of E85 for knock mitigation. The subject of this paper is the optimal use of E85 by using two fuel systems in the same EcoBoost engine: port fuel injection (PFI) of gasoline and direct injection (DI) of E85. Gasoline PFI is used for starting and light-medium load operation, while E85 DI is used only as required during high load operation to avoid knock. Direct injection of E85 (a commercially available blend of ∼85% ethanol and ∼15% gasoline) is extremely effective in suppressing knock, due to ethanol's high inherent octane and its high heat of vaporization, which results in substantial cooling of the charge. As a result, the compression ratio (CR) can be increased and higher boost levels can be used.

Today's automotive and electronics technologies are evolving so rapidly that educators and industry are both challenged to re-educate the technological workforce in the new area before they are replaced with yet another generation. In early November 2009 Ford's Product Development senior management formally approved a proposal by the University of Detroit Mercy to transform 125 of Ford's “IC Engine Automotive Engineers” into “Advanced Electric Vehicle Automotive Engineers.” Two months later, the first course of the Advanced Electric Vehicle Program began in Dearborn. UDM's response to Ford's needs (and those of other OEM's and suppliers) was not only at the rate of “academic light speed,” but it involved direct collaboration of Ford's electric vehicle leaders and subject matter experts and the UDM AEV Program faculty.

Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) have been implemented in the automotive industry to balance the requirements for vehicle crash safety, emissions, and fuel economy. With lower ductility compared to conventional steels, the fracture behavior of AHSS components has to be considered in vehicle crash simulations to achieve a reliable crashworthiness prediction. Without considering the fracture behavior, component fracture cannot be predicted and subsequently the crash energy absorbed by the fractured component can be over-estimated. In full vehicle simulations, failure to predict component fracture sometimes leads to less predicted intrusion. In this paper, the feasibility of using computer simulations in predicting fracture during crash deformation is studied.

Battery temperature variations have a strong effect on both battery aging and battery performance. Significant temperature variations will lead to different battery behaviors. This influences the performance of the Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) energy management strategies. This paper investigates how variations in battery temperature will affect Lithium-ion battery aging and fuel economy of a HEV. The investigated energy management strategy used in this paper is the Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy (ECMS) which is a well-known energy management strategy for HEVs. The studied vehicle is a Honda Civic Hybrid and the studied battery, a BLS LiFePO4 3.2Volts 100Ah Electric Vehicle battery cell. Vehicle simulations were done with a validated vehicle model using multiple combinations of highway and city drive cycles. The battery temperature variation is studied with regards to outside air temperature.

This paper proposes a novel probabilistic approach for multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) under uncertainty, especially for systems with feedback coupled analyses with multiple coupling variables. The proposed approach consists of four components: multidisciplinary analysis, Bayesian network, copula-based sampling, and design optimization. The Bayesian network represents the joint distribution of multiple variables through marginal distributions and conditional probabilities, and updates the distributions based on new data. In this methodology, the Bayesian network is pursued in two directions: (1) probabilistic surrogate modeling to estimate the output uncertainty given values of the design variables, and (2) probabilistic multidisciplinary analysis (MDA) to infer the distributions of the coupling and output variables that satisfy interdisciplinary compatibility conditions.

The airflow that enters the front grille of a ground vehicle for the purpose of component cooling has a significant effect on aerodynamic drag. This drag component is commonly referred to as cooling drag, which denotes the difference in drag measured between open grille and closed grille conditions. When the front grille is closed, the airflow that would have entered the front grille is redirected around the body. This airflow is commonly referred to as cooling interference airflow. Consequently, cooling interference airflow can lead to differences in vehicle component drag; this component of cooling drag is known as cooling interference drag. One mechanism that has been commonly utilized to directly influence the cooling drag, by reducing the engine airflow, is active grille shutters (AGS). For certain driving conditions, the AGS system can restrict airflow from passing through the heat exchangers, which significantly reduces cooling drag.

Engine downsizing, boosting, direct injection and variable valve actuation, have become industry standards for reducing CO2 emissions in current production vehicles. Because of the increasing complexity of the engine air path system and the high number of degrees of freedom for engine charge management, the design of air path control algorithms has become a difficult and time consuming process. One possibility to reduce the control development time is offered by Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) or Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulation methods. However, it is significantly challenging to identify engine air path system simulation models that offer the right balance between fidelity, mathematical complexity and computational burden for SIL or HIL implementation.

At various milestones during a vehicle’s development program, different CAE models are created to assess NVH error states of concern. Moreover, these CAE models may be developed in different commercial CAE software packages, each one with its own unique advantages and strengths. Fortunately, due to the wide spread acceptance that the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard gained in the CAE community over the past few years, many commercial CAE software now support cosimulation in one form or the other. Cosimulation allows performing multi-domain/multi-resolution simulations of the vehicle, thereby combining the advantages of various modeling techniques and software. In this paper, we explore cosimulation of full 3D vehicle model developed in MSC ADAMS with 1D driveline model developed in LMS AMESim. The target application of this work is investigation of vehicle NVH error states associated with both hybridized and non-hybridized powertrains.

This paper focuses on finding and analyzing the relevant parameters affecting traffic flow when autonomous vehicles are introduced for ride hailing applications and autonomous shuttles are introduced for circulator applications in geo-fenced urban areas. For this purpose, different scenarios have been created in traffic simulation software that model the different levels of autonomy, traffic density, routes, and other traffic elements. Similarly, software that specializes in vehicle dynamics, physical limitations, and vehicle control has been used to closely simulate realistic autonomous vehicle behavior under such scenarios. Different simulation tools for realistic autonomous vehicle simulation and traffic simulation have been merged together in this paper, creating a realistic simulator with Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL), Traffic-in-the-Loop (TiL), and Software in-the-Loop (SiL) simulation capabilities.

Vehicle fire investigators often use the existence of burn patterns, along with the amount and location of fire damage, to determine the fire origin and its cause. The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of ventilation location on the interior burn patterns and burn damage of passenger compartment fires. Four similar Ford Fusion vehicles were burned. The fire origin and first material ignited were the same for all four vehicles. In each test, a different door window was down for the duration of the burn test. Each vehicle was allowed to burn until the windshield, back glass, or another window, other than the window used for ventilation, failed, thus changing the ventilation pattern. At that point, the fire was extinguished. Temperatures were measured at various locations in the passenger compartment. Video recordings and still photography were collected at all phases of the study.

To-date the primary challenge in conducting aerodynamic CFD simulations of actual vehicles with realistically complex geometry has been the construction of a computational mesh. The CAD-to-Mesh processes used to-date have been laborious, often requiring many weeks of engineering time. In this paper we present a new technique to greatly expedite the CAD-to-Mesh process. The fundamentals of this technique are discussed followed by case studies that show that this technique can reduce the engineering time required for the CAD-to-Mesh process to just a few hours.

A belt driven Front End Accessory Drive (FEAD) is used to efficiently supply power to accessory components on automotive engines. The total energy absorbed by the FEAD consists of the accessory component requirements, the belt deformation and friction losses as well as the bearing losses. The accessory component torque requirements provide accessory function such as air conditioning, fluid pumping and electrical power generation. Alternatively, belt related torque losses are a significant parasitic loss, since they do not contribute any useful work. This paper will explain the source of energy loss in FEADs and outline a comprehensive strategy to reduce it. Test results comparing the effect of reduced friction on fuel consumption will be presented as well.

A hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) system model, which directly simulates vehicle drive cycles with interactions among driver, environment, vehicle hardware and vehicle controls, is a critical CAE tool used through out the product development process to project HEV fuel economy (FE) capabilities. The accuracy of the model is essential and directly influences the HEV hardware designs and technology decisions. This ultimately impacts HEV product content and cost. Therefore, improving HEV system model accuracy and establishing high-level model-test correlation are imperative. This paper presents a Parameter Diagram (P-Diagram) based model-test correlation framework which covers all areas contributing to potential model simulation vs. vehicle test differences. The paper describes each area in detail and the methods of characterizing the influences as well as the correlation metrics.

Described in this paper is a component test methodology to evaluate the door trim armrest performance in an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) side impact test and to predict the SID-IIs abdomen injury metrics (rib deflection, deflection rate and V*C). The test methodology consisted of a sub-assembly of two SID-IIs abdomen ribs with spine box, mounted on a linear bearing and allowed to translate in the direction of impact. The spine box with the assembly of two abdominal ribs was rigidly attached to the sliding test fixture, and is stationary at the start of the test. The door trim armrest was mounted on the impactor, which was prescribed the door velocity profile obtained from full-vehicle test. The location and orientation of the armrest relative to the dummy abdomen ribs was maintained the same as in the full-vehicle test.

Engine dynamometer testing was performed comparing E10, E20, and E30 splash-blended fuels in a Ford 3.5L EcoBoost direct injection (DI) turbocharged engine. The engine was tested with compression ratios (CRs) of 10.0:1 (current production) and 11.9:1. In this engine, E20 (96 RON) fuel at 11.9:1 CR gave very similar knock performance to E10 (91 RON) fuel at 10:1 CR. Similarly, E30 (101 RON) fuel at 11.9:1 CR resulted in knock-limited performance equivalent to E20 at 10:1 CR, indicating that E30 could have been run at even higher CR with acceptable knock behavior. The data was used in a vehicle simulation of a 3.5L EcoBoost pickup truck, which showed that the E20 (96 RON) fuel at 11.9:1 CR offers 5% improvement in U.S. EPA Metro-Highway (M/H) and US06 Highway cycle tank-to-wheels CO₂ emissions over the E10 fuel, with comparable volumetric fuel economy (miles per gallon) and range before refueling.

The fuel consumption of a vehicle is shown to be linearly proportional to (1) total vehicle work required to drive the cycle due to mass and acceleration, tire friction, and aerodynamic drag and (2) the powertrain (PT) mechanical losses, which are approximately proportional to the engine displaced volume per unit distance travelled (displacement time gearing). The fuel usage increases linearly with work and displacement over a wide range of applications, and the rate of increase is inversely proportional to the marginal efficiency of the engine. The theoretical basis for these predictions is reviewed. Examples from current applications are discussed, where a single PT is used across several vehicles. A full vehicle cycle simulation model also predicts a linear relationship between fuel consumption, vehicle work, and displacement time gearing and agrees well with the application data.

Sunroof is placed in certain high-end vehicles to give user a better driving experience. All automakers are searching alternatives to reduce weight and cost in the vehicle, in which sunroofs are also impacted. Some alternatives are already applied, as a honeycomb paper used in some sunshades that presents benefits, as less weight and with a good cost reduction. Although, due the reduced weight for this part produced in this material, it shows more susceptibility to reproduce the vibration that vehicle propagates in movement, especially in bad condition roads. The sunroof assembly is dependent of the roof reinforcement and roof skin, but in this special case, the validation could be done in the components itself because the interaction of the sunshades is directly dependent of the other sunroof parts, as rails and front frame.

This paper starts describing the in-mold grain lamination and bilaminated film cover when applied to instrument panels with seamless passenger air bag doors. It then offers a comparison between two different PAB door weakening processes, the laser scoring and the scoring by milling. It further discuss the scoring by milling process and analyses its implementation on a real case instrument panel. In the implementation case, the scoring pattern is checked against a pre-defined engineering specification and correlated to the results of a drop tower test, which shows the force necessary to break the PAB door. Three iterations are performed until the results for scoring pattern and breaking force are achieved. The breaking force results are then statistically validated against the specification and capability analysis.

Sunroof is installed in the vehicles to generate a better satisfaction for customer. Normally, the glass is maintained closed or fully opened, when the user would like to exterior air to get in. The glass runs in the sunroof rail that interacts directly with the roof skin and the roof reinforcement, where the whole sunroof structure is fixed. In general, sunroofs are equipped with two stages button, were the final or second stage, more used by users, allows the glass to move until the final position directly, without stops. Even though, the first stage could move the glass according user desire. For validation, the vehicle runs in several roads in order to capture any unusual response given by the sunroof. During specific test validation created, the glass was been positioned in the critical region that by design has the minimum distance against the roof flange.

Squeak and rattle are two undesirable occurrences during component operation and during vehicle driving condition, resulting in one of the top complains from costumers. One common grievance could happen during the user exterior handle operation and during side door closing. The exterior handle system during the operation could generate a squeak between interface parts, if materials and geometric tolerances was not been carefully designed. Also, vibration generated during door closing effort, might generate squeak between parts since the reinforcement for exterior handle touches the outer sheet metal internally. For this reason several guidelines might be included to avoid potential noise condition for this system during vehicle lifetime as correct material reduce friction between parts, taking into consideration the geometric condition between parts. Plus, coupling system on handles two pieces should also be evaluated to avoid squeak during use.