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The use of substances other than petroleum based fuels for power sources is not a new concept. Prior to the advent of petroleum fueled vehicles numerous other substances were used to create mobile sources of power. As the world's petroleum supply dwindles, alternative fuel sources are sought after to replace petroleum fuels. Many industries are particularly interested in the development of renewable fuel sources, or biologically derived fuel sources, which includes ethanol. The use of No. 2 diesel as well as many alternative fuels in compression ignition engines result in injector coking. Injector coking can severely limit engine performance by limiting the amount of fuel delivered to the combustion chamber and altering the spray pattern. Injector tip coking is also one of the most sensitive measures of diesel fuel quality [1]. A machine vision system was implemented to quantify injector coking accumulation when a compression ignition engine was fueled with oxydiesel.

This paper presents a programmable E/H control valve consisting of five individually proportional flow control valves. With a hybrid control algorithm, this valve has programmable valve characteristics, such as adjustable valve deadband and flow control gain, and programmable valve functions, such as different center functions. System analyses and experimental evaluations indicate that this programmable valve is capable of replacing conventional E/H control valves in practical applications.

The development of automated guidance for agricultural tractors has addressed several basic and applied issues of agricultural equipment automation. Basic analyses have included the dynamics of steering systems and posture sensors for guidance. Applied issues have evaluated the potential of several commercial sensing systems and a commercial mechanical guidance system. A research platform has been developed based on a Case 7220 Magnum1 2-wheel drive agricultural tractor. An electrohydraulic steering system was used and characterized in support of automated guidance control. Posture sensing methods were developed using GPS, geomagnetic direction sensors (GDS), inertial, and machine vision sensing systems. Sensor fusion of GPS-inertial-machine vision and GPS-GDS-machine vision provided the most flexible and accurate guidance and capable for operation under dynamically changing field conditions.