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The increasing number of electronic control units (ECUs) in vehicles leads to more and more complex systems with a steadily growing demand for data exchange. This growth includes the number of bus participants, the amount of data and hence the data transfer rates. In addition, the trend towards car-to-x connectivity reinforces the need for new in-vehicle communication solutions. Since the early 1990s Controller Area Network (CAN) is the most widely used powertrain bus system. Since 2000 FlexRay is used in addition to CAN in the premium segment. For classic powertrain applications, the data transfer rates of these bus systems are sufficient; however the utilization is sometimes difficult and gateways are often required. For new applications like hybrid and electric vehicles and the next generation of external communication applications (e.g. telematics services) new concepts based on the existing bus systems or completely new solutions are needed.

The conventional measurements to describe the photometric quality of headlamps usually only comprise the luminous flux and the illuminance (resp. the luminous intensity) in several measuring points given by Type Approval Legislation. Practically, these photometric measurements do not describe the visual impression of a headlamp light distribution sufficiently, neither in lab nor in real street geometry. With the clear outer lens headlamps introduced recently, filament images are projected directly onto the screens or streets, thus giving new impulses to research. Starting from the established photometric practice, other types of measurements and physiological fundamentals will be discussed. The basic tools to make physical measurement and physiological impression comparable, e.g. in terms of homogeneity, are shown.

With its origin in the process industry, the IEC 61508 „Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems” is not fully applicable in the automotive industry, forcing the automotive industry to work on an automotive specific adaptation (ISO 26262 “Functional Safety – Road Vehicles”). This ISO 26262 describes an ideal development process that starts from scratch. In reality development activities are often split locally and in time. This can only be handled with a world wide standard as a basis of a common approach, wide enough to give enough freedom to adapt to diverse boundary conditions, but tight enough to hinder local interpretations to be that far, that a complete safety case becomes impossible. Therefore a strict world-wide standard which allows compatible interpretations is mandatory.

Pedestrian protection is an upcoming field for research and development. Active pedestrian protection is described from a system perspective. In this view, the development of an active pedestrian protection system is shown. First an overview on statistics and legal requirements is given and the system requirements are discussed. Sensor concepts and realizations are shown, also different test methods and results are explained. FE-simulations to complete and later replace additional tests are developed, after cross check with the experimental results. In combination with the shown actuator concept this leads to a full functioning active pedestrian protection system.

Due to its high number of free parameters, the new generation of gasoline engines with direct injection require an efficient calibration process to handle the system complexity and to avoid a dramatic increase in calibration costs. This paper presents a concept of specific toolboxes within a standardized and automated calibration environment, supporting the complexity of GDI engines and establishing standard procedures for distributed development. The basic idea is the combination of a new and more efficient online DoE approach with the automatic and adaptive identification of the region of interest in the high dimensional parameter space. This guarantees efficient experimental designs even for highly non-linear systems with often irregularly shaped valid regions. As the main advantage for the calibration engineer, the new approach requires almost no pre-investigations and no specific statistical knowledge.

The official Indian accident statistics show that the number of road accidents and fatalities are one of the highest worldwide. These official statistics provide important facts about the current accident situation. It is suspected that for various reasons not all accidents are reported to the official statistic. This study estimates the degree of underreporting of traffic accidents with casualties in India. In order to get a national overview of the traffic accident situation it is necessary to improve the knowledge about underreported accidents. Therefore, the in-depth accident database of “Road Accident Sampling System India” (RASSI) was analyzed [1]. This project is organized by a consortium that has collected traffic accidents scientifically in four different regions since 2011 on the spot which have been reported either by police or by local hospitals and own patrol by RASSI engineers.

The fuel spray behavior in the near nozzle region of a gasoline injector is challenging to predict due to existing pressure gradients and turbulences of the internal flow and in-nozzle cavitation. Therefore, statistical parameters for spray characterization through experiments must be considered. The characterization of spray velocity fields in the near-nozzle region is of particular importance as the velocity information is crucial in understanding the hydrodynamic processes which take place further downstream during fuel atomization and mixture formation. This knowledge is needed in order to optimize injector nozzles for future requirements. In this study, the results of three experimental approaches for determination of spray velocity in the near-nozzle region are presented. Two different injector nozzle types were measured through high-speed shadowgraph imaging, Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) and X-ray imaging.

A major source for soot particle formation in Gasoline-Direct-Injection (GDI) engines are fuel-rich zones near walls as a result of wall wetting during injection. To address this problem, a thorough understanding of the wall film formation and evaporation processes is necessary. The wall temperature before, during and after fuel impingement is an important parameter in this respect, but is not easily measured using conventional methods. In this work, a recently developed laser-based phosphor thermography technique is implemented for investigations of spray-induced surface cooling. This spatially and temporally resolved method can provide surface temperature measurements on the wetted side of the surface without being affected by the fuel-film. Zinc oxide (ZnO) particles, dispersed in a chemical binder, were deposited onto a thin steel plate obtaining a coating thickness of 17 μm after annealing.

The 2011 Report of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India states that the total accidents with injuries is estimated about 497, 686 out of which the injuries are 511, 394 and fatalities are 142, 485, an average of one fatality per 3.5 [1]. Social losses on account of these crashes are estimated at over Rupees 100 000 Crores annually or 3% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) [2]. The irony is that these causalities are rising at 5.9 % annually. India accounts for 10% of the global road crash fatalities. Therefore traffic safety became very important in India. In order to understand the root causes of accidents data is needed in more detail which could be analyzed and points out the major issues to find solutions to stop this trend. Besides vehicle safety, infrastructure related issues and education skills can be derived out of accident data. Official statistics regarding accidents in India are available in national and state wise reports.

In recognition of safety considerations, modern fuel tanks are frequently extremely irregular in shape. This places limits on the application of conventional potentiometric sensors. Required are more universal sensors without mechanically-moving parts. These sensors should also be characterized by especially good resolution and precision in the residual-quantity range, that is, the zero point precision should be of a high order. One type of metal rod can be bent into any of a variety of shapes to provide an effective means of monitoring the fuel level. In this metal rod, the propagation characteristics of a certain type of sound wave, known as bending waves, display major variations according to the level of the surrounding medium: The waves spread more rapidly through the exposed section of the rod than through the area which remains submerged. Thus the rod's characteristic oscillation frequency varies as a function of immersion depth.

Tapping of one or more torques (ranges 10 Nm and 60 Nm) on the steering column for the purpose of servo control must satisfy high accuracy requirements on the one hand and high safety requirements on the other hand. A suggestion for developing a low-cost solution to this problem is described below: Strain gages optimally satisfy both these requirements: However, for cost reasons, these are not applied directly to the steering column but to a prefabricated, flat steel rod which is laser welded to the torque rod of the steering column. The measuring direction of the strain gages is under 45° to the steering column axis. The strain gages are either vacuum metallized onto the support rod as a thin film or laminated in a particularly low-cost way by means of a foil-type intermediate carrier.

This paper describes the architecture and the implementation of a software for the communication between networked in-vehicle ECUs. The communication software is based upon a real-time multitasking operating system. The operating system and the communication software form an application-independent platform for the implementation of distributed ECU software. The software architecture consists of several communication layers and a station management module. The communication layers provide network driver, data transfer services and an application interface that is independent of the used network protocol. The station management module is responsible for configuration and initialization of the communication controller, error detection during operation and error handling. The modula r structure of the architecture supports the simple adaptation of the software to different bus systems and communication controllers.

As new smart systems for passenger cars are assisting me driver to handle manoeuvres in critical and normal situations, brake systems are required to fulfill the compatibility and interface demands. These advanced brake systems will be operated in a remote mode during normal braking and for autonomous brake interventions. BOSCH is developping a brake-by-wire system on a hydraulic basis, called ‘Electrohydraulic Brake EHB’. Brake pressure buildup is supplied by a high pressure accumulator. Generation of the high pressure is done by an electric motor driven pump, similar to current ABS-systems. Pressure at the wheel brakes is individually controlled by closed-loop pressure control, consisting out of inlet, and outlet valves, pressure sensor and corresponding algorithm. It is specified, that this control must be completely noiseless, proportional, fast, and highly accurate. To raise the acceptance of such a system, it will be introduced with a conventional hydraulic backup.

The continuing increase in the performance of restraint systems has led to a drastic increase in the number of actuator devices. The individual wiring of the igniters becomes more and more problematic through the accompanied large number of plug connections and cables. Along with demands for weight and volume reduction, there are requirements for EMI and short circuit protection to eliminate erroneous deployment and misuse. As a solution, a new multi-protocol dual wire bus system is described that has the capability to supply energy and address multiple peripheral output stages to simultaneously fire any combination of actuators.

The Bosch ABS for passenger cars which has been in production since 1978 has been described in numerous publications. Following the gathering of extensive experience with the Bosch ABS and its installation in the different models of passenger car, the concept has been revised with various upgrade levels in order to further optimize braking performance on µ-split road surfaces with different right/left adhesion coefficients, in order further to improve the operation of the system when braking on very slippery road surfaces and also to adapt the control algorithm to four-wheel-drive vehicles with differential locks.

Aerodynamic styling is playing an increasing role in the design of today's passenger cars. The profile sections of the frontends of cars imply that the available installation space for the headlamps - particularly its overall depth and height is decreased in size. New types of headlamps had to be developed. One result of extensive investigations are stepped reflectors with up to six paraboloids with different focal lengths arranged around the same focal point. This type of reflector (called homofocular reflector) cannot be formed from sheet steel but from plastic by injection molding. Depending on thermal, mechanical and geometric boundary conditions three different reflector materials can be used: lacquered thermosets, unlacquered thermoplastics by one or two material injection moldings. Similar to sheet steel the use of glass lenses reduces considerably the freedom of the designer. This disadvantage of offset by the use of plastic lenses.

Pedestrian crashes are a major safety concern worldwide, especially in India. About one of every ten traffic-related fatalities in the country is a pedestrian. In 2016 nearly 15,800 pedestrians were killed in India. They were mainly exposed to risk when crossing and walking on the road in urban and rural areas. The aim of the study was to understand the pedestrian behavior on the road and to identify characteristics of pedestrian crashes in India. Many unique behavior was observed like pedestrian crossed half way and stopped in middle of road. Nearly 10% of pedestrians are fatal each year involving in ~5% of overall accidents in India, This study revels every second pedestrian accident occurred while walking and crossing the road straight.

The correct timing of the diesel injection pump on engine is of major importance for all functions of the engine and for its exhaust emissions, during production pass off as well as in the field. Within the diesel service workshops a variety of devices exist to test the timing of the injection pump on engine. Most of them operate by clamp-on transducer being fitted to the injection pipe. A large uncertainty exists concerning the accuracy of such timing systems. Most diesel engine manufacturers do not have confidence in the timing devices capability and, therefore, do not recommend their usage. A working group within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted a method for the validation of these measurement systems, which usually is used to judge the capability of measurement gauges for industrial production processes.

Ultrasonic transducers are widely used in automotive and industrial applications for surround sensing. Anisotropic directivity patterns with a narrow-angled beam in the vertical plane and a wide-angled beam in the horizontal plane are needed in automotive applications particularly. Today’s ultrasonic transducers for automotive applications are mainly metal based, pot-like ultrasonic transducers. The anisotropic directivity pattern is achieved by increasing the thickness of the vibrating plate-like part of the structure locally. Composites with locally structured fiber reinforcements open up the possibility to design the dynamical behavior of components without changing its contour. Using this new dimension of design to modify the directivity pattern of sound radiating components is less examined in literature.

Motorized two wheelers, also known as powered two wheelers (PTW) are the most common mode of transportation in India. Around one in four deaths that occurred on the roads in India in 2012 involved a motorcyclist, according to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. This constitutes the highest contributor for fatal accidents in India [1]. The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) analysis shows the risk of a motorcyclist having a fatal accident is 20 times greater than for a car driver travelling the same route [2]. An investigation conducted by Bosch looked at the accident database of Road Accident Sampling System for India (RASSI). This investigation revealed interesting facts about the Indian motorcycle accident situation, such as root causes of powered two wheeler collisions and riders behaviour including their braking patterns during the pre-crash phase of the accident.