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This paper presents a new technique to estimate the coherent operational forces, with respect to the evaluation location, at the connections of separated passive substructures with reciprocity. Since transfer path analysis is conducted with respect to the evaluation location, the forces applied onto the substructures are, therefore, also required to estimate the coherent operational forces. In order to estimate the forces, the coherent impedance matrix, which is the projection of the impedance matrix onto the subspace with respect to the evaluation location, is estimated without measuring it directly. The acceleration responses at the connections of the passive substructure are measured by the excitation at the evaluation location with reciprocity. The technique decomposes the acceleration responses into the output and input element vectors on the subspace. With those vectors, the coherent impedance matrix is constructed.

This paper presents a study of experimental transfer path contribution with the estimation technique of the projected operational force under CVT clutch lockup operational condition. Since transfer path analysis is conducted with respect to the evaluation location, the forces applied onto the substructures are, therefore, also required to estimate the coherent operational forces. In order to estimate the forces, the coherent inertance matrix, which is the projection of the inertance matrix onto the subspace with respect to the evaluation location, is estimated without measuring it directly. The acceleration responses at the connections of the passive substructure are measured by the excitation at the evaluation location with reciprocity. The proposed technique decomposes the acceleration responses into the output and input element vectors on the subspace. With those vectors, the coherent full inertance matrix considering cross coupling effects is constructed.

Using small thin-film pressure sensors deposited onto a piston skirt surface, oil-film pressure on the piston skirt surface is measured when piston slap noise is generated without affecting the surface geometry, stiffness and mass of the piston. Under a no-load firing engine condition and at low temperature, the measured oil-film pressure corresponded well to the measured acceleration of the cylinder liner, which is indicative of piston slap noise, confirming the validity of the present method. Moreover, the oil-film pressure distribution on the skirt surface was measured for different engine speeds and piston pin offsets, which enabled more insight to be provided into piston secondary motion than that by considering the effects of cylinder liner acceleration.

An inexpensive driving simulation system with sufficient fidelity has been developed. The system produces motion cues of four degrees of freedom, visual and auditory cues, and control feel on the steering wheel. This paper describes the features of this newly developed system and gives examples that demonstrate its effectiveness. The motion cues provided in this system are yaw, heave, and lateral and fore/aft accelerations. The lateral and fore/aft accelerations are simulated by tilting the simulator compartment. A computer-processed road image is given through a CRT monitor. The restoring torque of the steering wheel is produced by an electrical servosystem via a coil spring. Cruising sound is given in order to improve speed perception. Since the system uses digital computers, the vehicle characteristics are altered easily by merely rewriting the software. This enables us to simulate special vehicle dynamics such as front & rear wheel steering.

An experimental technique is developed for a vehicle moving steadily in the vicinity of the ground. A towing tank with a steadily advancing carriage is used and the unfavorable effects of the boundary layer on the ground which is inevitable in the case of a wind tunnel are fully removed. Experiments with a box-shaped model and a car model revealed some interesting features of lift, drag and side force at various clearances from the ground. Lift force is the most sensitive to the boundary layer and the lift measured in a wind tunnel may not completely represent lift on the road. The flow with vortices near the bottom surface of the body has one of the most important effects on the forces.

Our study unveils what smart cars are needed to minimize congestion by traffic stability. We have previously considered pacer cars with single lane road networks based on a car following model, e.g. adaptive cruise control (ACC). However, pacer cars may have a limitation with multi-lane roadways in terms of lane distribution of traffic and shockwave suppression. Therefore, we motivate building a new smart car which extends the capability of pacer cars allowing lane changing at the timing of congestion detection. In essence, the congestion detection plays a role of adjusting the (time) headway of smart cars to determine whether lane changes should be undertaken. Lane changes can be used to uniformize (or equalize) lane distribution for traffic (flow) stability. Our simulation study has suggested that the proposed smart cars enforce the capability of traffic stability more than manual and pacer cars.

This paper presents new technique to estimate the projected operational forces, which is the operational forces with respect to the evaluation location, at the connections of the separated passive substructures with reciprocity. Since the transfer path analysis (TPA) is conducted with respect to the evaluation location, the forces for the substructures are, therefore, also required only to estimate the projected operational forces. In order to estimate the forces, the projected inertance matrix, which is the projection of the inertance matrix onto the subspace with respect to the evaluation location, is estimated without measuring it directly. The acceleration responses at the connections of the passive substructure are measured by the excitation at the evaluation location with the reciprocity. The technique decomposes the acceleration responses into the output and input element vectors on the subspace. With those vectors, the projected inertance matrix is constructed.